-
Let me ask you all a question.
-
How much weapons grade nuclear material
-
do you think it would take to level
a city the size of San Francisco?
-
How many of you think
it would be an amount
-
about the size of this suitcase?
-
Okay, and how about this minibus?
-
All right. Well actually,
under the right circumstances,
-
an amount of highly enriched uranium
-
about the size of your morning latte
-
would be enough to kill 100,000 people
-
instantly.
-
Hundreds of thousands of others
would become horribly ill,
-
and parts of the city
would be uninhabitable for years,
-
if not for decades.
-
But you can forget that nuclear latte,
-
because today's nuclear weapons
-
are hundreds of times more powerful
-
even than those we dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
-
and even a limited nuclear war
involving say, tens of nuclear weapons,
-
could lead to the end
of all life on the planet.
-
So it's really important
-
that you know
-
that right now we have
over 15,000 nuclear weapons
-
in the hands of nine nations,
-
and if you live in a city,
-
or near a military facility,
-
one is likely pointed right at you.
-
In fact, if you live in any
of the rural areas
-
where nuclear weapons are stored globally,
-
one is likely pointed at you.
-
About 1,800 of these weapons
-
are on high alert,
-
which means they can be launched
within 15 minutes
-
of a presidential command.
-
So I know this is a bummer of an issue,
-
and maybe you have that,
what was it, psychic fatigue
-
that we heard about a little bit earlier?
-
So I'm going to switch gears
for just a second, and I'm going to talk
-
about my imaginary friend,
-
who I like to think of as Jasmine,
-
just for a moment.
-
Jasmine, at the age of 25,
-
is part of a generation that is
more politically and socially engaged
-
than anything we've seen in 50 years.
-
She and her friends think of themselves
-
as change agents
and leaders and activists.
-
I think of them as Generation Possible.
-
They regularly protest
about the issues they care about,
-
but nuclear weapons are not one of them,
-
which makes sense, because Jasmine
was born in 1991,
-
at the end of the Cold War,
so she didn't grow up hearing a lot
-
about nuclear weapons.
-
She never had to duck and cover
under her desk at school.
-
For Jasmine, a fallout shelter
is an app in the Android store.
-
Nuclear weapons help win games,
-
and that is really a shame,
-
because right now, we need
Generation Possible
-
to help us make some really important
decisions about nuclear weapons.
-
For instance, will we further reduce
our nuclear arsenals globally,
-
or will we spend billions,
-
maybe a trillion dollars,
-
to modernize them so they last
throughout the 21st century,
-
so that by the time Jasmine is my age,
she's talking to her children
-
and maybe even her grandchildren
-
about the threat of nuclear holocaust?
-
And if you're paying any attention at all
-
to cyberthreats, or for instance
if you've read about the Stuxnet virus,
-
or for God's sake, if you've ever
had an email account or a Yahoo account
-
or a phone hacked,
-
you can imagine the whole new world
of hurt that could be triggered
-
by modernization in a period
of cyberwarfare.
-
Now, if you're paying attention
to the money,
-
a trillion dollars could go a long way
-
to feeding and educating
and employing people,
-
all of which could reduce the threat
of nuclear war to begin with.
-
So --
-
(Applause) --
-
this is really crucial right now,
-
because nuclear weapons,
they're vulnerable.
-
We have solid evidence
-
that terrorists are trying
to get ahold of them,
-
and just this last spring,
when four retirees
-
and two taxi drivers were arrested
in the Republic of Georgia
-
for trying to sell nuclear materials
for 200 million dollars,
-
they demonstrated that
the black market for this stuff
-
is alive and well.
-
And it's really important because
-
there have been dozens of accidents
involving nuclear weapons,
-
and I bet most of us have never heard
anything about them.
-
Just here in the United States,
-
we've dropped nuclear weapons
on the Carolinas twice.
-
In one case, one of the bombs,
-
which fell out of an air force plane,
-
didn't detonate because the nuclear core
was stored somewhere else on the plane.
-
In another case, the weapon
did arm when it hit the ground,
-
and five of the switches designed
to keep it from detonating failed.
-
Luckily, the sixth one didn't.
-
But if that's not enough
to get your attention,
-
there was the 1995
Black Brant incident.
-
That's when Russian radar technicians
-
saw what they thought
was a US nuclear missile
-
streaking towards Russian airspace.
-
It later turned out to be
a Norwegian rocket
-
collecting data about the northern lights.
-
But at that time,
Russian President Boris Yeltsin
-
came within five minutes
-
of launching a full-scale
retaliatory nuclear attack
-
against the United States.
-
So, most of the world's nuclear nations
-
have committed to getting rid
of these weapons of mass destruction.
-
But consider this:
-
the treaty on the nonproliferation
of nuclear weapons,
-
which is the most widely adopted
arms control treaty in history,
-
with 190 signatories,
-
sets no specific date by which
the world's nuclear armed nations
-
will get rid of their nuclear weapons.
-
Now, when John F. Kennedy
sent a man to the moon
-
and decided to bring him back,
or decided to do both those things,
-
he didn't say, "Hey, whenever
you guys get to it."
-
He gave us a deadline.
-
He gave us a challenge
-
that would have been incredible
just a few years earlier,
-
and with that challenge,
-
he inspired scientists and marketers,
-
astronauts and schoolteachers.
-
He gave us a vision.
-
But along with that vision,
-
he also tried to give us,
and most people don't know this either,
-
he tried to give us a partner
-
in the form of our fiercest
Cold War rival, the Soviet Union,
-
because part of Kennedy's vision
for the Apollo program
-
was that it be a cooperation,
not a competition with the Soviets.
-
And apparently, Nikita Khrushchev,
the Soviet premier, agreed.
-
But before that cooperation
could be realized,
-
Kennedy was assassinated
-
and that part of the vision was deferred.
-
But the promise of joint innovation
-
between these two nuclear superpowers
-
wasn't totally extinguished,
-
because in 1991, which is the year
that Jasmine was born
-
and the Soviet Union fell,
-
these two nations engaged in a project
-
that genuinely does seem incredible today
-
in the truest sense of that world,
-
which is that the US sent cash
to the Russians when they needed it most
-
to secure loose nuclear materials
-
and to employ out-of-work
nuclear scientists.
-
They worked alongside American scientists
-
to convert weapons-grade uranium
-
into the type of fuel that could used
for nuclear power instead.
-
They called it Megatons To Megawatts.
-
So the result is that for over 20 years,
-
our two nations
-
had a program that meant that
-
one in 10 lightbulbs in the United States
-
was essentially fueled
by former Russian warheads.
-
So, together these two nations
did something truly audacious.
-
But the good news is
-
that the global community has the chance
to do something just as audacious today.
-
To get rid of nuclear weapons
-
and to end the supply of the materials
required to produce them,
-
some experts tell me would take 30 years.
-
It would take a renaissance of sorts,
-
the kinds of innovation that
for better or worse
-
underpinned both the Manhattan Project,
which gave rise to nuclear weapons,
-
and the Megatons To Megawatts program.
-
It would take design constraints.
-
These are fundamental to creativity,
-
things like a platform
for international collaboration,
-
a date certain, which is
a forcing mechanism,
-
and a positive vision
that inspires action.
-
It would take us to 2045.
-
Now, 2045 happens to be
the 100th anniversary
-
of the birth of nuclear weapons
in the New Mexico desert,
-
but it's also an important date
for another reason.
-
It's predicted to be
-
the advent of the singularity,
-
a new moment in human development
-
where the lines between artificial
intelligence and human intelligence blur,
-
where computing and consciousness
become almost indistinguishable,
-
and advanced technologies help us solve
the 21st century's greatest problems:
-
hunger, energy, poverty,
-
ushering in an era of abundance.
-
And we all get to go to space on the way
to becoming a multi-planetary species.
-
Now, the people who really
believe this vision
-
are the first to say they don't yet know
precisely how we're going to get there.
-
But the values behind their vision
-
and the willingness to ask "how might we?"
-
have inspired a generation of innovators.
-
They are working backward
from the outcomes they want
-
using the creative problem-solving methods
of collaborative design.
-
They are busting through obstacles.
-
They're redefining what we
all consider possible.
-
But here's the thing:
-
that vision of abundance isn't compatible
-
with a world that still relies
-
on a 20th century nuclear doctrine
-
called "mutually assured destruction."
-
It has to be about building
-
the foundations for the 22nd century.
-
It has to be about strategies
for mutually assured prosperity,
-
or at the very least,
-
mutually assured survival.
-
Now, every day, I get to meet
people who are real pioneers
-
in the field of nuclear threats,
-
and as you can see, many of them
are young women,
-
and they are doing fiercely
interesting stuff,
-
like Mareena Robinson Snowden here,
who is developing new ways,
-
better ways to detect nuclear warheads,
-
which will help us
overcome a critical hurdle
-
to international disarmament,
-
or Melissa Hanham, who is using
satellite imaging
-
to make sense of what's going on
-
around far-flung nuclear sites.
-
Or we have Beatrice Fihn in Europe,
-
who has been campaigning to make
nuclear weapons illegal
-
in international courts of law,
-
and just won a big victory
at the UN last week.
-
(Applause)
-
And yet, and yet,
-
with all of our talk in this culture
about moon shots,
-
too few members of Generation Possible
-
and those of us who mentor them
-
are taking on nuclear weapons.
-
It's as if there's a taboo.
-
But I remember something that Kennedy said
-
that has really stuck with me,
-
and that is something to the effect
-
that humans can be as big as the solutions
to all the problems we've created.
-
No problem of human destiny, he said,
-
is beyond human beings.
-
I believe that.
-
And I bet a lot of you here
believe that too.
-
And I know Generation
Possible believes it.
-
So it's time to commit to a date.
-
Let's end the nuclear weapons chapter
on the 100th anniversary of its inception.
-
After all, by 2045, we will have held
billions of people hostage
-
to the threat of nuclear annihilation.
-
Surely 100 years will have been enough.
-
Surely a century of economic development
-
and the development of military strategy
-
will have given us better ways
to manage global conflict.
-
Surely if ever there was a global
moon shot worth supporting,
-
this is it.
-
Now, in the face of real threats,
-
for instance North Korea's
recent nuclear weapons test,
-
which fly in the face of sanctions,
-
reasonable people disagree
-
about whether we should maintain
some number of nuclear weapons
-
to deter aggression.
-
But the question is,
what's the magic number?
-
Is it a thousand?
-
Is it a hundred? Ten?
-
And then we have to ask,
-
who should be responsible for them?
-
I think we can agree, however,
-
that having 15,000 of them represents
a greater global threat
-
to Jasmine's generation than a promise.
-
So it's time that we make a promise
-
of a world in which we've broken
the stranglehold
-
that nuclear weapons have
on our imaginations,
-
in which we invest
in the creative solutions
-
that come from working backward
from the future we desperately want,
-
rather than plodding forward
from a present
-
that brings all of the mental models
and biases of the past with it.
-
It's time that we pledge our resources
as leaders across the spectrum
-
to work on this old problem in new ways,
-
to ask "How might we?"
-
How might we make good on a promise
-
of greater security
for Jasmine's generation
-
in a world beyond nuclear weapons?
-
I truly hope you will join us.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)