Annapolis: Vice President Kamala Harris focused on the challenges of the pandemic, climate change and cybersecurity threats during her keynote speech to graduates at the US Naval Academy on Saturday, the first by a woman at the 175-year-old institution.
Harris, the nation's first female vice president and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the office, said the pandemic has accelerated our world into a new era.
It has forever impacted our world," she said.
"It has forever influenced our perspective, and if we weren't clear before, we know now: Our world is interconnected. Our world is interdependent, and our world is fragile.
A pandemic can spread throughout the world in a matter of months, a gang of hackers can disrupt the fuel supply, and one country's carbon emissions can threaten the sustainability of the Earth, the vice president said.
This, midshipmen, is the era we are in, and it is unlike any era that came before," Harris said.
"So, the challenge now, the challenge before us now is how to mount a modern defence to these modern threats.
Also read: Ready to serve, says Harris after her inauguration as US Vice President
Harris described the cyberattack earlier this month that shut down the nation's largest fuel pipeline as a warning shot in what the new Navy and Marine Corps officers will be facing.
In fact, there have been many warning shots, so we must defend our nation against these threats, and at the same time we must make advances in things that you've been learning things like quantum computing and artificial intelligence and robotics and things that will put our nation at a strategic advantage, Harris said.
In her speech to more than 1,000 graduates, including ones who majored in mechanical, electrical and ocean engineering, Harris described climate change as a very real threat to our national security.
