SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good afternoon, everyone. It is wonderful to be back here at Stanford, to be in California in Silicon Valley. We’ve had a couple of great days covering The waterfront, including meeting with some remarkable tech innovators last night, going to the Accelerator this morning, and then spending time here on campus at Stanford. And I really want to thank Secretary Rice for the incredibly warm hospitality and the great conversation, as always. And it was particularly great to be with so many students.
We are at an inflection point. The post-Cold War world has come to an end, and there is an intense competition underway to shape what comes next. And at the heart of that competition is technology. Technology will in many ways retool our economies. It will reform our militaries. It will reshape the lives of people across the planet. And so it’s profoundly a source of national strength.
At the same time, it is front and center in the positive vision that we have for the future: technology finding cures for diseases; technology making sure that people around the world have sustainable, healthy food supplies at a time now of growing food insecurity; technology to make sure that we can power our economies going forward without relying on fossil fuels and making sure that we’re dealing with climate change; technology to have resilient, strong supply chains – we’ve experienced what it looks like when we don’t; and technology ultimately that can produce good jobs for the future.
And so much of that technology is coming to fruition starting here in Silicon Valley and right here at Stanford University. It’s also front and center to our foreign policy, first because we can’t do any of these things alone as effectively as we can when we’re working in partnership and collaboration and cooperation with others. And deepening those collaborations, deepening those partnerships, including on technology, is part of our foreign policy.
We also have to be the ones who are at the table who are helping to shape the rules, the norms, the standards by which technology is used. If we’re not, if the United States isn’t there, then someone else will be, and these rules are going to get shaped in ways that don’t reflect our values and don’t reflect our interests; or no one will be there and we’re going to have chaos before we have a world that’s actually organized to try to take advantage of all of the progress that we’re making.
We’ve tried to build a State Department that is fit for purpose, that has the right people, that has the right organization, that has the right focus, to make sure that America is leading around the world on issues related to science and technology. And so part of our conversation here in Stanford and throughout the last 24 hours was listening and learning from people about how we can continue to effectively do that. We stood up a new bureau on cyberspace and digital policy; as we’re building that out, having a real dialogue and learning from people here makes a huge difference. And we want to make sure that we have a sustained, ongoing dialogue as we’re working around issues of science and technology both here in the United States and around the world. So for me, this was an incredibly fruitful visit, but it’s part of an ongoing conversation, an ongoing dialogue.
Finally, I’ll say this. We are at our best when we’re investing in our own strengths. I was at The Accelerator this morning seeing some of the extraordinary things that are being done there, literally from looking at the tiniest particle to the cosmos in its entirety. And the work that’s done at this national lab is literally going to provide the answers that we’re seeking to dealing with the challenges of our time, from climate to health to food and so on.
But it works best when we’re making the right investments in it. And…