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