LIVE: Blinken Speaks to Overseas Security Advisory Council

Good morning, everyone. How's everybody doing? Great. As was mentioned, my name is Steve Martel. I'm a vice president of public policy here at Amazon. I hope you all have enjoyed the first day, now into the second day, here at our second headquarters building. We affectionately call it HQ2, and this is our large production venue. Welcome. I think this is the largest gathering that we've had in this space. So we hope for many more. And we're looking forward to an exciting day today, a second day of OSAC's annual briefing. OSAC has been an invaluable partner to Amazon as we've expanded our operations globally, as many of you all have. We're glad to continue this partnership here in the outskirts of our nation's capital, and through hosting this event in particular, and welcoming Secretary Blinken to HQ2. Amazon chose Arlington as the home of our East Coast headquarters in 2017, and we're proud to call the DMV our second home. Of course, we have our headquarters in Seattle where the company was founded. This building you're in here is part of what we call Metropolitan Park, and it's the first phase of our HQ2 expansion. We currently operate two 22-floor towers, and this is one of them. There's one kind of directly across from this one. It totals more than 2.1 million square feet of office space, and it's home to over 8,000 Amazon employees here just on this footprint and growing. You will have noticed we have 50,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, and I strongly encourage everyone to visit. May's just opened on the corner directly below us, Good Company Donuts, although I see that they offered coffee outside, but they are worthy of your patronage, and we're proud to have the partnership with locally owned small businesses on the ground floor of our building. We did that very deliberately, and I hope everyone will come back when phase two goes up. The famous Helix is part of phase two, and that continues to be on the roadmap going forward. Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than $135 billion in the Commonwealth, and through investments in operations and infrastructure, as well as compensation to our employees, we have more than 39,000 now in the Commonwealth of Virginia in a whole range of activities, including the things that you see here today. All of this has been accomplished in partnership with government agencies, both in Richmond and locally, but predominantly at the state and local level, but it's indicative, we fundamentally believe, as do many of you all here today in public-private partnerships, and it's well exhibited with OSAC members and the Department of State. It's obviously on a higher level and on a global level, but again, we wouldn't be in these buildings without a partnership at the local level. This mutually beneficial partnership ensures the timely exchange of information and mitigate security risks abroad. Much like all of you at Amazon, we view security as paramount. It's not just a priority, but it's core to everything that we do. We recognize that no single organization can have a complete picture of the global security landscape. That's why partnerships like OSAC are so critical. By bringing together expertise from public and private sectors, we can develop a more comprehensive understanding of the threats and how to mitigate them. And events like the OSAC annual briefing provide the opportunity to learn, share best practices, and collectively improve security capabilities, and I'm confident through our partnership we can enhance our ability to protect our organizations and contribute to global security. It's now my honor to introduce this morning's keynote speaker, the 71st United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Over three decades and three presidential administrations, Secretary Blinken has helped shape U.S. foreign policy to ensure it protects U.S. interests and delivers results for the American people. Secretary Blinken's journey in public service began at the State Department. Fast forward to today, Secretary Blinken leads the very institution where he started his career, guiding it through some of the most complex challenges of our time. For companies like Amazon and indeed all of our businesses, the State Department, under Secretary Blinken's leadership, has been an invaluable ally. By championing U.S. technology leadership and digital cooperation with our partners, he has opened doors and created opportunities that will benefit U.S. innovators for years to come. We're grateful for the Secretary's time today, especially given, I think, you all have seen his travel schedule. I was kidding with him earlier that he came from the Amazon to Amazon. Seemed to enjoy that. He said he was primed to be here, and I said, touche. And so, yeah, I can't make these things up. Without further delay, please join me in welcoming to the stage Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Steve stole my best lines. It's going to be a whole downhill from here. But in all seriousness, it's particularly good to be here with someone who's been a long-time resident of this area, Washington, D.C., more than a decade. It's so gratifying to see this extraordinary investment take life and give even more to this community. So I'm genuinely grateful just as a citizen of the Commonwealth and someone who also feels very strongly about Washington, D.C., I'm so grateful to Amazon for its presence, for its investment, for its engagement. And as Steve said, I've been doing this now for about 32 years. I started at the State Department back in the early 1990s. And as someone who's here with us today, one of my great colleagues, knows back then I started on the sixth floor of the department in the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs in the front office. I had a small office. Its previous occupant had been a very large safe. So that gives you some idea of what the office was like. No windows, a very large Wang computer. Some of you may be old enough to remember those gigantic Wang desktop computers. Anyway, as I like to say, over the course of 30 years, I moved up one flight to the seventh floor and got some windows, so not bad. But to all of you here today, but especially, Steve, to you, to Amazon, to our incredible team at the department, including Assistant Secretary Smith, Director Mattus, the entire Diplomatic Security Team, for all that they do to protect the State Department community every day and for their role in this partnership. I have to tell you, I have a deep, personal affection and gratitude to all of the men and women of Diplomatic Security. Just on a personal level, other than my family, likely the first person I see in the morning every day and the last person I see at night, every evening, is from DS. And we all travel the world together. They do so much to make sure that we can do our jobs every single day. And this institution that we built together, OSAC, since its creation back in 1985, it has been a vital part to the State Department. And as Steve said, we're operating, you're operating, in a global environment with a global brand. The American flag. And that is almost entirely for the good, but it brings some challenges with it. And it's imperative that working together, we make sure that we're doing everything possible, whether it's in federal government, whether it's in the private sector, to make sure that we're defending our people, defending our property, and looking out for each other. And that's what OSAC has been all about. Together, we have partnered to prevent, to mitigate, to manage the threats to our people, to our facilities, to our firms overseas. Now, back when it started, OSAC had 15 members. Today, 6,700 organizations across 150 country chapters, representing an incredible broad spectrum of private actors, from Fortune 500 companies to small NGOs. And as you look at it, it's not just that the coalition has grown in numbers, it's adapted, time and time again, to the threat landscape that is increasingly complex and increasingly volatile. Terrorist groups, the foremost danger identified at OSAC's founding, they changed, they've adapted. In many ways, they've expanded their reach, and they've modernized their tactics. And then around the world, we see new security challenges that weren't even present when OSAC was founded, that continue to surface, and rapidly, rapidly, rapidly evolve. Today, we have OSAC partners who are sharing best practices to safeguard against threats from emerging technologies, like AI, like malicious cyber activity, preparing for the security risks that will be exacerbated by things like climate change, more intense hurricanes, droughts, and other extreme weather. OSAC has also become an essential forum for managing crisis, because when the rubber really hits the road, having this organization, having all of these lines of connection, communication, makes a big difference. We see members using encrypted communications channels to exchange information on the impacts of conflicts, health emergencies, natural disasters, their impacts on civilians, on infrastructure, on supply chains. We see this working in real time. And this group increasingly plays a coordination role for the security of major events, like World Expos, or the Paris Olympics, where OSAC ran a joint operations hub. Earlier this week, the State Department signed a series of MOUs with Elements Health and the Security Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society, through which OSAC has transitioned from a federal advisory committee to a public-private partnership. And here again, what I've seen over many years in government, and especially now, is the power of these public-private partnerships. I think this is at the heart of everything we need to be doing to make sure that government and the private sector are working effectively together. So this model is going to empower OSAC to respond even more quickly to unfolding crises or newfound threats. It will allow members to contribute greater financial support to OSAC. It will enable the State Department to solicit the expertise of all OSAC partners, as opposed to the narrow group of members who could engage under the original framework. At its core, OSAC's mission is to make it safer for Americans to advance our shared interests around the world, because a world where our fellow citizens can safely travel, safely work, safely trade, safely study, safely live, is a better world. A better world for our people, a better world for our workers, for enterprises, and I would argue a better world for people everywhere. So I'm really, really pleased to be here today to help kick this off, because I think we've taken an important step this week to further strengthen our ability to deliver on that crucial and enduring mission, a mission that I think is getting even more essential. We're not going back on the fact that we're operating in an interconnected global world. That's not going to change. And we just have to make sure that, working together, we can operate in the most safe and most secure way possible. Thanks to OSAC, we're able to do that. So, to each and every one of you, thank you, thank you, thank you for your partnership, and have a great day. Thank you.