GPF 2006: Reducing Nuclear Danger

Good evening. Welcome again to the Global Philanthropy Forum. I'm Jane Wales. For those of you who haven't yet looked in front of yourselves on your, at your place, you've got a beautiful gift from Pangaea, which is an artisan market that gets crafts from all around the developing world, and they have kindly offered a gift to you. It's either a little frog, I think, at least at my table, or a little business card case, and so look ahead of, look ahead of your nose, and that's where you'll find it. Now, for those of you who are new to the Global Philanthropy Forum... you're arguing over whether you got a frog or the case. We've seen this before, you can arm wrestle, you can find a solution to this, but for those of you who are new to the forum, we normally meet in Silicon Valley or else, I was answering at the table, or else we meet online or we meet by a conference call on a monthly basis, and we also hold a summer seminar, this year it's going to be in Aspen, in cooperation, in... We're cosponsoring it with the Aspen Institute, and so some of you may be interested in doing that, so please just let us know. Our reason that we came to Washington is that we wanted to learn more about the interplay of policy and philanthropy, and we also wanted to be able to invite each of you, and so we want to thank you all for coming, you've added immeasurably to this event already, and we're only partway through. Now, I've been asked by Tim Worth to say a word about the lingo, because he said, you know, enough of this philanthropic jargon. Tell people what it is you mean when you say philanthropy or strategic philanthropy, so here goes. I'm going to ask that you take as your metaphor Hurricane Katrina. Philanthropy is what you do before the storm to make sure that you've got the science so that you understand weather patterns, and to make sure you've got the social network so you can convey the danger to those who are in a dangerous situation. Charity is what you do after the storm to care for those who have been displaced, those who are in need of medical attention. But even to do that, you need to have the infrastructure that philanthropy creates. You need to have organizations like CARE and Save The Children, and Mercy Core, and Catholic Relief Services, and that, investment in that infrastructure is philanthropy's investment in the future. Now, strategic philanthropy is about changing the conditions altogether. It's about investing in, trying to get at the root causes of poverty that create conditions where you really can't possibly have a plan. You can't have a plan in a crisis for people in, who are suffering from endemic poverty. It's about investing in the science that will, and investing in the actions that will prevent climate change so that hurricanes like Katrina don't become the norm, and so extreme weather patterns are not part of our lives, and it's about investing in building a long-term policy consensus so that our governments, all governments, will make the kinds of long-term public investments in making sure that the levees are around, and making sure that you've got a public health system that is functioning. It's that kind of preventative work, that kind of structural change that strategic philanthropy is about. Have I answered the question, Tim? I've done okay, says Tim. I wanted to get over that linguistic barrier because everyone here has really kindly washed away, swept away any other barrier that could have existed: the barrier between speaker and audience, the barrier between teacher and student, the barrier between grantor and grantee, and we're really grateful to you for that 'cause it's allowed us to take a look at how you can inform policy in both the developed and the developing worlds, I've just been sitting with Jessica Matthews talking to her about their new investment in opening a think tank in Beijing, and opening a think tank in Beirut, and how important that kind of activity is. It's allowed us to explore that kind of thing and also to think about how we can leverage knowledge, and leverage technology, and leverage social networks in order to achieve our social goals, and finally it's helped us to think about something that I think is all-important, and that's how to set aside narrow political differences so that you can work on issues that really, really matter to us all. There's a sense, I think, among us all that, I mean, we're Republicans or Democrats or Independents in this room, and I think there's a sense among us all that we have to set aside those issues on which we disagree so we can focus on those matters we agree on because we owe that much to the poor. Now, this year, we've placed a new emphasis on what younger people bring to the table. I think you've met a lot of the next generation of philanthropists, of activists, and social entrepreneurs, I'm talking about people in their early twenties who are bringing so much to the table as moral voices and as innovators, and so I'm particularly grateful to all of them for what they have brought to this conference, and I know that as you get to know them over the next few days, that you're really going to like their style. Now, I get to introduce someone whose style I particularly admire, and that's John Morgridge. Throughout the forum's history, John has been a very special presence. He's been an advocate from the very, very start, but there's a lot more. As we partnered with the Skoll Foundation, and Hewlett, and Carnegie, and Packard, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the United Nations Foundation, and Levi Strauss and Mott, and the Network and others, and as we reached out to build a network of philanthropists one donor at a time, there was something that Juliette and I discovered, particularly as we were working in Silicon Valley, and that is that John Morgridge had served as a quiet mentor to so many of the next generation of givers. He had been this quiet, subtle role model, a kind of a godfather who offered guidance throughout. And in that sense, John had already served to create the conditions, already created the infrastructure on which the Global Philanthropy Forum could ultimately be built. So, you guessed it: John's a strategic philanthropist. So please join me in welcoming John Morgridge to the stage. In your Katrina example, you left out one very important element that I happen to represent, and that is U.S. business. U.S. business should be part of these solutions. It should be part of the plan. Clearly, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, some of the oil companies demonstrated that they did know how to prepare, and they did know how to go into action, and we should engage them in our philanthropy, not only in this country, but around the world. Thank you Jane. Good evening. Seven years ago, there was no Global Philanthropy Forum. It was just an idea of our daughter Kate. Its goal was to increase international private giving, which hovers a little over one percent through greater donor awareness, and this forum is the vehicle to accomplish that. But great ideas require great execution, and to fill, fulfill their potential and that was done through many folks but particularly through Jane Wales and the World Affairs Council. Through their efforts, we have seen this idea come alive. So why bring the Forum to Washington? After such successful conferences, in delightful palm-studded Stanford University, as a founding funder, we have taken a part in GPF almost every year. Two years ago, as I looked out on the remarkable set of philanthropists gathered for the forum, I got to thinking, "Why not take GPF to Washington?" As it turned out, there was a microphone in front of me at the very moment. It seemed like a good idea then, even better today. Great execution again by Jane and her team have made this possible. It probably didn't hurt that she has a few friends in this town. I would only caution that we shouldn't come too often. There are three reasons that I thought GPF should come to Washington. The first was that philanthropists want to match the scale of their solution to the scale of the problem, and often we address very large problems. That takes leverage, and the very best opportunities for leverage often are with government agencies. Tomorrow, you will hear from annual Alan Dethrige of Shell Oil and Dan Rudy of USA ID about the ways in which they have partnered in advancing transparency overseas. You will visit the World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation and learn about the partnership opportunities that exist there. Governments, like philanthropists, are committed to advancing social goals. Why not leverage each other's expertise by doing it together? The second reason I thought that GPF should go to Washington was that it wouldn't hurt for Washington policy makers to hear what we were thinking about, what was on our minds. Today has been a pretty good beginning. We are committed to advancing systemic change. We want to give back, we want results. The fundamental response of our form is to help translate our commitment into effective action. Of the 600 donors who are part of the forum, 48 percent are new to international giving. 77 percent now devote more than a quarter of their portfolio to international giving. Almost 80 percent have increased their giving in the past five years, half of whom report that they have done so as a direct result of introductions made at the forum to issues, actors, and strategies for giving internationally. While 92 percent of our, while 92 percent reported that last year's conference influenced their grant making. 77 percent report that they treat one another as ongoing, as an ongoing information trust as they form their strategies for giving and social investing. We are a community, and we welcome all comers. And there is a third reason I thought this community should come to Washington, and that is that there is a policy context to all that we do, no matter what our goal, no matter what our passion, we are, we will not achieve it absent good policies in both the private and governmental worlds. Tonight we are hearing from a man who understands the relationship of policy, philanthropy, and activism. He has been a leader in all three worlds. Senator Sam Nunn will be joined on stage by Deana Arsenian, a longtime grant maker whose task it has been to inform policy and broaden the policy options available to governments. I hope you will lend your, I hope you will join me in welcoming Dina, who will in turn introduce Former Senator Sam Nunn, one of my mother's favorite senators, even though she only met him on C-SPAN. Thank you. Good evening, thank you John, and thanks for pronouncing my name correctly. Jane Wales asked me to moderate the panel on advancing peace and security, reducing nuclear danger, and to introduce former Senator Sam Nunn as the main speaker, so I did what any moderator would do: I Googled Senator Sam Nunn, and Google revealed over 400,000 entries for Sam Nunn, described by some as a conservative Democratic senator from Georgia. Then, on February 21st, I was reading the New York Times, and I saw two entries for Sam Nunn on the opin pages of the New York Times. One of the opin pages, an article by Nicolas Kristof, suggested that President Bush should appoint Senator Nunn to the position of Secretary of Defense. So the obvious question is: What other individual gets over 400,000 entries on Google and appears twice on the same page of the New York Times? It is my privilege, a pleasure and privilege, to introduce this panel, and particularly so because of the long-standing relationship between Senator Nunn and Carnegie Corporation of New York, of which the Senator is a former trustee. As one of America's first philanthropists, Andrew Carnegie would have been pleased to see a room of like-minded individuals. Like you, he devoted much of his life to make the world a safer and better place. Capturing the essence of philanthropy, Andrew Carnegie once wrote: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." But Andrew Carnegie was also very aware of the importance of using wealth wisely. A prolific writer, he also wrote, "The miser millionaire who hoards his wealth, does less injury to society than the careless one who squanders his unwisely, even if he does so under the mantel of sacred charity." Nuclear Threat Initiative, NTI, founded in 2001 by Ted Turner and Sam Nunn, is one of those institutions that uses its wealth wisely. NTI aims to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Even in a world crowded with international dangers, nuclear weapons pose a particular challenge. As we meet here today, we have eight nuclear powers: United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, and presumably Israel. But the nuclear club is growing. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has vowed to pursue a uranium enrichment program that could lead to Iran becoming a nuclear state, while North Korea has declared that it has become a nuclear state. The overall number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the United States and Russia stands over 8,000, with most of these weapons on trigger alert despite the end of the Cold War, and experts question the effectiveness and the sustainability of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. So to help us think through how to reduce the nuclear danger, let us all welcome the man who needs really no introduction, Senator Sam Nunn. Thank you very much, Deana, I hope you will forgive my voice tonight, a combination of allergies and a cold, I suppose, but I'll sputter through it and I hope you will be patient with me if I have a little bit of difficulty. Deana, thank you so much for the gracious introduction, and also for the support Carnegie has given to the overall nuclear equation for many years, particularly during the breakup of the Soviet Union. Without Carnegie's Foundation's support of Dr. Ash Carter and the work he did at Harvard, Senator Richard Luger and I would have had an extremely difficult time, it was difficult anyway, but without it, it would have been pretty much impossible, and passing the Nunn-Luger Program in 1991, when the Society Union broke up, and without the Nunn-Luger program, we might not have an NTI tonight, so Deana, thank you and thank David Hannenberg, and Vartan Gregorian and others who have meant so much to the quest that we all have such a stake in. Secretary of State. Secretary of State Dean Atchison was once asked how he would define foreign policy. He pondered for a moment and then he replied, "Foreign policy is one damn thing after another." When I look around this room tonight and I consider the numerous diverse worthy causes that are sponsored and supported by this assembled group, I think I would say we're involved in one damn good thing after another in this room. However, all of us in the foundation world have a common denominator, indeed, an audacious hope that we as donors and non-profit organizations can inform policy leverage our resources to produce beneficial change, and help stimulate our government, our media, and our citizens to focus attention, resources, and determination in addressing the urgent problems of our time. When Ted Turner saw a 60-minute program on the nuclear dangers, he saw an urgent problem. That was in the year 2000, and Ted was appalled that ten years after the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia had, still, thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to destroy much of the world within just a few minutes. Ted asked me that year whether a well-funded private foundation could focus on these dangers and make a difference. Tim Worth, an old friend of mine in the Senate had already demonstrated in the UN Foundation that the combination of Ted Turner and experts in the field was a very powerful combination. But we weren't certain about the nuclear quest. We spent six months seeking the advice of experts in the nuclear arena, biological arena, and the philanthropic arena. We even thought about the combined Turner-Nunn personality mix and whether that really was sustainable. On that front, we concluded that Ted and I combined, on average, had about the right amount of charisma and money to co-chair this effort. The outcome was NTI, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, with a major component called the Global Health and Security Initiative. People haven't heard nearly as much about the work we're doing in the biological area, but Mark Solinsky and Peggy Hamburg and their team have done, I think, a magnificent job and are continuing to, and I'll mention some of their work in my remarks tonight. Our goal is to strengthen security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. We set out to contribute by word, thought, and deed to account for and secure nuclear weapons materials around the globe, to reduce the threat from biological weapons by strengthening the world's capacity to prevent, detect, respond to, and contain biological threats, whether intentional or by act of nature, and to facilitate the establishment of normative standards of combat and ethics to help deter and prevent biological terrorism. Three to bring about the necessary reductions, safeguards, and operational changes to the United States and Russian nuclear forces so that they are no longer in a Cold War, doomsday posture, with both sides having little time for warning and little time for thinking before launching. For many organizations, as we've heard already tonight, it is essential to be involved in policy. For NTI, it is absolutely imperative. In the nuclear arena, the heavy lifting has to be done by governments which have the large-scale resources and the authority to take on the threats and to reduce them, but we have also learned that direct action by a non-profit organization like NTI in the right circumstances could be and can be an important catalyst and example for the government, not only our government, but governments abroad. WE also knew that to have a real impact, an organization would have to have some essential ingredients. First: top experts who are widely known and respected for their experience and knowledge. Second: a strong communications team to raise awareness of the catastrophic threat without creating despair, and that is a big without, and to explain in understandable terms what has to be done to close the very large gaps between the threat and the response, the financial resources not only to tell the world must be done in this arena, but also to demonstrate through direct action projects how to do it, and governance by an international board of directors with experience and expertise in government and with the stature necessary to gain the attention of top governmental policy makers. Trying to explain NTI in a few words would be like trying to explain Ted Turner in a few words: A task that is obviously impossible, you'll hear from him tomorrow, so I won't attempt the latter mission, but let me give you a few examples of the former one. One of the goals, one of the founding goals of NTI was to clean out and fully secure nuclear material still left in hundreds of sites in dozens of countries around the world. We call that mission at the very beginning the global cleanout. In the summer of 2002, just nine months after 9/11, 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough to build two or three nuclear bombs, sat in an old research reactor outside Belgrade. We found out about it, and we were bombing Belgrade and the Russians, in spite of the anger, called us and warned us about that particular stockpile. I'm not sure whether that was before we'd hit the Chinese embassy by mistake, but nevertheless, the warning was appreciated. This raw material of nuclear terrorism was not secured by any metal detectors or any radiation detectors, just a few armed guards, in other words, below the security standards of a number of American shopping malls. The United States, knowing the risk, started discussions with the Yugoslav government to move the material to Russia so it could be blended down into material that would be unusable in weapons. Russia was agreeable in the transport and blend down of the materials, but Yugoslavia was reluctant to give up the materials, so it demanded help in fraying the cost of transferring the material and clearing up the left over nuclear waste to the site could be used by the people in that area for gainful economic matters. The U.S. negotiators had no authority to pay for that, and the talks stalled. The State Department called our team at the Nuclear Threat Initiative asking for help. We were able to commit 5 million dollars for cleanup within 24 hours of the State Department request, and the message was able to be delivered immediately by the State Department to Yugoslavia to complete the deal. On August 22nd, 2002, the nuclear material was loaded into canisters, placed in trucks, driven to the Belgrade Airport under the escort of 1200 armed guards, and flown to Russia with a fighter escort, where it was rendered safe and put beyond the reach of terrorists for good. The following morning the Washington Post ran an article on page 1 describing the events of what became known as Project Vincha, beyond addressing the immediate danger, the story had the effect we had hoped for. It highlighted the danger of nuclear material in fully secured nuclear reactors around the world. It led Congress to ask why the government needed to rely on the funds of a private organization to secure nuclear material. It drew a US commitment to clean out 24 high-threat sites; a work that I have to report is still in progress, not completed. It eventually, albeit three years later, led the United States Department of Energy to launch a 450 million dollar global threat reduction initiative with Russian cooperation, which set milestones for cleaning out, fully secured, bomb-usable material from nuclear reactors around the world. Since then, the United States and Russia, and the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Association, have undertaken nuclear cleanup operations in Bulgaria, Rumania, Uzbekistan, and the Czech Republic. NTI has also been working in the last three years directly with the government of Kazakhstan to eliminate more than 2 dozen bombs' worth of highly enriched uranium, work that was completed earlier this year, which led to the President of Kazakhstan to commit to the elimination of all bomb-making material that is still in that country. I tell this story not because the mission of getting weapons-usable nuclear material around the goal, getting that material secured, has been accomplished. It has not. There is a long way to go, but that effort is underway, something we could not have reported a few years ago. I also do not contend that NTI alone could have made this happen. Governments had to act for this initiative to be completed, but I do believe that we've made a very significant difference. Another urgent goal for our organization, described in our six month scoping study was to, quoting from that study, "to provoke a fundamental review of the role and purpose of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the Cold War, including specifically an examination of the operational force posture of the U.S. and Russian forces," end quote. On the morning of January 25, 1995, and most people still don't know this, although it's public information, a rocket was launched from an island off the northwest coast of Norway. The launch was part of a research project investigating the Northern Lights, and it had been announced to each of Norway's neighbors in a standard letter sent months earlier, but for some reason Russia's letter had been misplaced, and now the Russian radar operators thought they were under attack. Under their procedures, Russia had eight minutes to decide whether to launch a massive nuclear strike against missile silos in Europe and the United States. The warning made its way almost instantly to Boris Yeltsin, who for the first time ever, activated his nuclear briefcase, the prerequisite for ordering a missile attack, and he and his senior advisors monitored, as he and his senior advisors monitored the rocket's flight, Russian strategic forces were put on high alert. Ultimately the disaster was averted. Russian radar operators identified the rocket, and later it landed harmlessly in the ocean, but experts around the world were shocked. CIA official Peter Prior, for instance, called it the most frightening, dangerous moment of the nuclear age, and this was in 1995, not 1965. Most disturbing of all, it occurred during a time of peace, when the relations between our two countries were certainly warm, warmer, certainly, than today. If Russia had not had its nuclear missiles on hair trigger, capable of launching within minutes, the danger would have been greatly diminished. The satellite launch would have been seen for what it was long before any nuclear Russian missiles could have been fired. Most of all, there would have been more time, time to think, time to communicate, and time to be certain. Hair-trigger nuclear posture that we have today was instigated at the height of the Cold War to deter the use of nuclear weapons. Today, when the deteriorated Russian warning system, early warning system, the posture is increasingly, is increasing the risk it was designed to reduce for both the United States and for Russia and for our citizens. The bottom line, 15 years after the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia still have the Cold War nuclear force postures that are together unstable and dangerous and set a very poor example for the world. Working to change government policy is very difficult work. We at NTI have not been able to get both sides remove their weapons from hair trigger, even though we've written about it, spoken about it, commissioned studies about it, both Russian and US studies, by the way, gotten Americans and Russians talking about it, and even though President Bush by his own word would appear to agree with us about it, 24 years in the Senate have taught me that government rarely changes what it is doing without some pressure from the outside, particularly if it has been doing it a long, long, time. That's why it is important to raise awareness of these threats and of what we need to do to beat them, so public awareness is also a major goal of our organization. Without media and public awareness, it is close to impossible to get governmental policy makers focused on a problem, even a potentially catastrophic problem. We at NTI are working on this, to be a force in the debate, the public needs to know the gap between what government is doing, and what it ought to be doing. So we're telling Americans what we believe to be the facts: That terrorism with weapons of mass destruction is our greatest threat, that Bin Laden has said it's his religious duty to acquire these weapons, that al-Qaeda said they have a right to kill 4 million Americans, 2 million of them children, that Bin Laden secured a religious order authorizing a catastrophic attack on the United States, and that Bin Laden is not the only group that other groups are also capable of this type thinking as we and our friends in Japan found in 1995 from the Aum Shinrikyo. Quoting them, "A nuclear bomb can be built with a relatively small amount of nuclear material. A trained nuclear engineer with an amount of highly enriched uranium or plutonium about the size of a grapefruit or an orange, together with commercially available material could fashion a device that could fit in a van like the one parked in the garage of the World Trade Center in 1993. Such a bomb would level lower Manhattan," end quote. Highly enriched uranium is hard to make but it is not so hard to steal. We've got to make it a lot, lot harder. It is housed in hundreds of facilities in dozens of countries, some of it secured by nothing more than an underpaid guard and a chain link fence. The largest amount of unsecured material is in Russia, but bomb making material is also stored in over 40 different countries around the globe, the most effective, least expensive way to prevent nuclear terrorism is to secure nuclear weapons and nuclear materials at the source. Acquiring weapons and materials is the hardest step for the terrorists to take and the easiest step for us to stop. By contrast, every other step in the process, building the bomb, transporting it, and detonating it, is easier for the terrorists to take and much, much harder for us to stop. Trying to detect a bomb once its already made is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack and its why the defense against catastrophic terrorism must begin with securing weapons and fissile materials in every country and in every facility that has them. No nuclear material, no nuclear weapon. No nuclear weapon, no nuclear terrorism. The bottom line on the nuclear front: We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe. The same is true in spades in the biological area. On the bio front, NTI has focused on the complex and critical task of reducing bio threats with a focus on increasing security and strengthening global disease prevalence. The World Health Organization is responsible for investigating infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Unfortunately, until a few years ago, WHO, the World Health Organization, had to raise money from member states before dispatching a team of investigators to the site of disease outbreak in poor countries that might not be able to reimburse. In 2002, our organization committed 500,000 to the WHO to create a revolving fund so teams could deploy within 24 hours of a reported infectious disease outbreak, and the cost of deployment could be raised and the funds replenished later. In other words, respond first, raise the money later. Rapid response can mean the difference between a locally