Learn English Ashton Kutcher Lets End Human Trafficking with BIG subtitles

it is an honor to be here as a young man

raised and and and brought up in the

public school system I pledged my

allegiance to that flag every single day

and the honor may be one of the greatest

honors of my life today is to be here

and leverage the work that that I’ve

done as testimony that may in some way

benefit this nation that I love I’d like

to start by saying thank you to chairman

corker for your leadership in this

endeavor and to Senator Cardin your

leadership has been extraordinary and

I’d like to also say thank you to the

rest of the committee that has supported

this effort this is a bipartisan effort

and in a country that is riddled with

bipartisan separation on so many things

slavery seems to come up as one of these

issues that we can all agree upon and I

applaud you for your agreement and I

believe in you and your leadership and

your ability to take us out of it I’m

here today to defend the right to pursue

happiness it’s a simple notion the right

to pursue happiness it’s bestowed upon

all of us by our Constitution every

citizen of this country has the right to

pursue it and I believe that it is

incumbent upon us as citizens of this

nation as Americans to bestow that right

upon others upon each other and upon the

rest of the world but the right to

pursue happiness for so many is stripped

away

it’s raped it’s abused it’s taken by

force fraud or coercion it is sold for

the momentary happiness of another and

this is about the time when I start

talking about politics that the internet

trolls tell me to stick to my day job

so I’d like to talk about

my day job my day job is as the chairman

and the co-founder of thorn we build

software to fight human trafficking in

the sexual exploitation of children and

that’s our core mission my other day job

is that of the father of two a two month

old and a two year old and as part of

that job that I take very seriously I

believe that it is my effort to defend

their right to pursue happiness and to

ensure a society and government that

defends it as well as part of my

anti-trafficking work I’ve met victims

in Russia I’ve met victims in India I’ve

met victims that have been trafficked

from Mexico victims in New York and New

Jersey and all across our country a bet

on FBI rates where I’ve seen things that

no person should ever see I’ve seen

video content of a child that’s the same

age as mine being raped by an American

man there was a sex tourist in Cambodia

and this child was so conditioned by her

environment that she thought she was

engaging in play I’ve been on the other

end of a phone call from my team asking

for my help because we had received a

call from the Department of Homeland

Security telling us that a

seven-year-old girl was being sexually

abused and that content was being spread

around the dark web and she had been

being abused and they watched her for

three years and they could not find the

perpetrator asking us for help we were

the last line of defense an actor and

his foundation were the potential last

line of defense that’s my day job and

I’m sticking to it

I’d like to tell you a story about a 15

year old girl in Oakland we’ll call her

Amy Amy met a man online started talking

to him could short while later they met

in person

within hours Amy was abused raped and

forced into trafficking she was sold for

sex this isn’t an isolated incidents

there’s not much that’s unusual about it

the only unusual thing is that Amy was

found and returned to her family within

three days using the software that we

created a tool called spotlight and in

an effort to protect its capacity over

time I won’t give much detail about what

it does but it’s a tool that can be used

by law enforcement to prioritize their

caseload it’s a neural net it gets

smarter over time it gets better and it

gets more efficient as people use it and

it’s working in six months with twenty

five percent of our users reporting

we’ve identified over six thousand

trafficking victims 2,000 of which are

minors this tool is in the hands of

4,000 law enforcement officials and 900

agencies and we’re reducing the

investigation time by sixty percent this

tool was effective it’s efficient it’s

nimble it’s better it’s smarter now

there’s often a misconception about

technology and that in some way it is

the generator of some evil that it’s

creating job displacement and that it

enables violence and malice acts but as

an entrepreneur and as a venture

capitalist in the technology field

I see technology as simply a tool a tool

without will the will is the user of

that technology and I think it’s an

important distinction an airplane is a

tool is a piece of technology and under

the right hands it’s used for mass

global transit and under the wrong hands

it can be flown into buildings

technology can be used to enable slavery

but it can also be used to disable

slavery and that’s what we’re doing

I alluded to a phone call that we got

from the Department of Homeland Security

about this girl that was being

trafficked on the dark web now it’s

interesting to note that the dark web

was created in the mid 90s it was a tool

that was created by the naval research

lab called tor a tool with absolute

purpose and positive intention for

sharing intelligence communications

anonymously it’s also been used to help

people who are being disenfranchised by

their government within political

dissent in oppressive regimes but on the

other side it’s used for trafficking for

drug trafficking for weapons trafficking

and for human trafficking and it’s also

the warehouse for some of the most

offensive child abuse images in the

world now when the Department of

Homeland Security called us and asked

for our help and asked if we had a tool

I had to say no and it devastated me it

haunted me because for the next three

months I had to go to sleep every night

and think about that little girl that

was still being abused and the fact that

if I built the right thing we could save

her so that’s what we did and now if I

got that phone call and Greig the answer

would be yes we’ve taken these

investigation times of dark web material

from three years down to what we believe

can be three weeks the tool is called

solace once again I won’t go into too

much detail about the tool but it’s

being used by 40 agencies across the

world today in beta and we believe that

it’s going to yield extraordinary

results and just like spotlight they get

smarter and more efficient and more cost

effective over time

so where do we go from here what do we

need obviously we need money we need

financing in order to build these tools

technology is expensive to build but the

beauty of technology is once you build

the warehouse

it gets more efficient and more cost

effective over time I might be able to

present

to you a government initiative where

next year I come back and ask for less

and to me that’s that’s like it seems

extraordinary the technology we’re

building is efficient it works it’s

nimble because traffickers changed their

modus operandi and we can change ours as

well just as efficiently if not more

efficiently as they can its enduring and

it only gets smarter with time we also

are collecting data we have KPIs we

actually understand that if we’re

delivering value we increase our efforts

in that area if we’re not delivering

value we shut it down and it’s a

quantifiable solution one of my mentors

told me don’t go after this issue if you

can’t come up with a quantifiable

solution we can quantify it and we can

make the work that we’re doing and the

initiatives that you put forth

accountable my second recommendation is

to continue to foster these private

public partnerships a spotlight was only

enabled by the McCain institution and

the full support of cinema came and a

man that I find to be not only a war

hero but a hero to this issue John

McCain it wasn’t just created by them

there was extraordinary support from the

private sector company digital reasoning

out of Tennessee stepped up to the plate

they offered us effort they offered us

engineers they offered a support and pro

bono work we’ve had the support of

companies that oftentimes war with each

other from Google to Microsoft to AWS to

Facebook and some of our other

technology initiatives include many many

other private companies it’s vital to

our success these probably public

partnerships are the key the third thing

I’d like to highlight is the pipeline

you know we sit at the intersection of

discovery of these victims but the

pipeline in in the pipeline out are just

as vital and just as important in

addressing them are just as important

I’d like to highlight one thing in

particular that being the foster care

system there are 500,000 kids

in foster care today I was astonished to

find out that 70% of the inmates in the

prison across this country have touched

the foster care system and 80% of the

people on death row were at some point

in time exposed to the foster care

system 50% of these kids will not

graduate high school and ninety-five

percent of them will not get a college

degree but the most staggering statistic

that I found was that foster care

children are four times more likely to

be exposed to sexual abuse

that’s a breeding ground for trafficking

I promise you that’s a breeding ground

for trafficking but the reason I looked

at foster care is that it’s a microcosm

it’s it’s a sample set that we have

pretty extraordinary data around a date

even though we can’t seem to fix it it’s

a microcosm for what happens when

displacement happens abroad as the

unintended consequences of our actions

or inactions in the rest of the world

when people are left out when they’re

neglected when they’re not supported and

when they’re not given the love that

they need to grow it becomes an

incubator for trafficking and this

refugee crisis if you if we want to be

serious about ending slavery we cannot

ignore it and we cannot ignore our

support for this issue in that space

because otherwise we’re going to deal

with it for years to come

the outbound pipeline there’s just not

enough beds the bottom line is it wants

people what someone is exposed to this

level of abuse it’s a mental health

issue and there aren’t enough beds

there’s not enough support and we have

to have the resources on the other side

otherwise the recidivism rates are

through the roof it’s it’s astonishing

because when Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

are not being met people resort to

survival and if this is their means of

survival and the only source of love

that they have in their life that’s what

they go for so we have to address the

pipeline out and we have to create

support systems on the other end it’s

not an entitlement it’s a demand to end

slavery my fourth and final

recommendation is the bifurcation of sex

trafficking and labor trafficking

they’re both aberrations they’re both

awful they’re both slavery and they’re

both punitive in fact but the solution

sets are highly differentiated when you

look at sex trafficking a victim is most

often present at the incident of

Commerce and this this provides an

opportunity for for drastic intervention

whereas in labor trafficking the victims

are being hidden behind the

manufacturers and the merchandisers and

it requires an entirely different set of

legislation and proactivity and

enforcement in order to shut it down no

there’s a lot of rhetoric that’s going

on in the world right now about job

creation in the United States well if we

want to create jobs in the United States

I would ask you to consider eliminating

slavery from the pipelines of

corporations because a lot of that

slavery is happening abroad and if we

ask those corporations under extreme

pressure that if you don’t change it you

are going to be penalized and if you

don’t clean up that pipeline it’s gonna

mean trouble and they’re forced with two

decisions they can either clean up the

pipeline abroad or they can move the

jobs to the United States of America

where they can be regulated and

supported the bringing jobs to America

can be the consequence of doing the

right thing

or it can be the consequence of doing

the wrong thing but that choice is up to

you now it’s not lost on me that all of

this disruption in our marketplace is

going to have economic reap backlash

like that is not lost on me at all but I

ask you do you believe that Abraham

Lincoln had to consider the economic

backlash of shutting down the cotton

fields in the south when he shut down

slavery because I’m sure that weighed on

his mind

you know happiness can be given to no

man it must be earned it must be earned

through through generosity and through

purpose but the right to pursue it the

right to pursue it is every man’s right

and I beg of you that if you give people

the right to pursue it what you may find

in return is happiness for yourself

thank you