Presentations & Speeches

High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. The talk will outline key insights from the new book Insider Threats (https://www.belfercenter.org/publicat...), which was co-edited with Scott Sagan of Stanford University. The book offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the US Army. It also includes an unprecedented analysis of terrorist thinking about using insiders to get fissile material or sabotage nuclear facilities. The talk will discuss cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and “worst practices” from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.
 

Full remarks by former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Samantha honoring Aryeh Neier with his Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Women’s Health Coalition Annual Dinner in New York City on March 7, 2017.

The High Level Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty’s (FMCT) Expert Preparatory Group held an open-ended informal consultative meeting at the United Nations in New York on 2-3 March 2017. The purpose of the meeting was to engage all UN Member States to share their views through interactive discussions on the scope of a future treaty, its definitions, verification requirements, and associated legal and institutional arrangements. As the FMCT is still at the stage of a proposed agreement, the purpose of the consultative meeting is not to negotiate the Treaty but prepare the terrain on future negotiations. The Group, which submits its report to the UN General Assembly in 2018, draws from the Governmental Experts Group (GGE) Report of 2015, further details issues, and looks at various options, inter alia, on the definitions, scope, verification alternatives, and their implications. The GGE participants agree that the future FMCT needs to be internationally and effectively verifiable, and is an important step in nuclear disarmament. The GGE identified a number of key issues related to verification, which are being summarized in this presentation.

Full remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, on “Russia: The Threat, the International Order, and the Way Forward” at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC on January 17, 2017.

Free media is a key instrument of social autonomy - which can be destroyed. Unfortunately, this mechanism seems to be deteriorating in many of those countries with which Germany maintains close relations. How can the freedom of words and images be defended? Is press freedom without democracy possible - and differently? On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the magazine Der Spiegel, the director of the foreign bureau Britta Sandberg and editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbäumer discussed with the journalists Galina Timchenko from Russia, and Can Dündar from Turkey, and Harvard Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director Cathryn Clüver from the USA in the KörberForum. A conclusion: "The solution to the international problem of threatened press freedom is called solidarity" (Can Dündar). 

In German, Russian, and Turkish with German subtitles. 

Full remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, opposing a UN General Assembly Amendment to Delay the Mandate of the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, at the United Nations on December 19, 2016.

Full remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at a UN Security Council Emergency Briefing on Syria in New York City on December 13, 2016.

As the IAEA Director General Emeritus, Hans Blix put it “A nuclear accident anywhere is an accident everywhere”. Fukushima revealed that no one state is immune from fallacies that resulted both before and after the nuclear accident. That will be also true with any nuclear terrorism event, which we have been spared thus far.

Full remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at the U.S. Holocaust Museum Memorial Tribute on “The Inexorable Joyfulness of Elie Wiesel” in Washington, DC on November 30, 2016.

Full remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at a UN Security Council Emergency Session on Aleppo in New York City on November 30, 2016.