Harris tells Naval Academy graduates world ‘fragile’ after pandemic

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday addressed the graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy, warning the newly commissioned Navy and Marine Corps officers of a “fragile” world following the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the keynote speech — the first by a woman at a commencement at the nearly 175-year-old institution — Harris said the pandemic had “accelerated our world into a new era,” similar to the way the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had shaped the country.

“It has forever impacted our world,” she said to roughly 1,000 graduates at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md. “It has forever influenced our perspective, and if we weren’t clear before, we know now: Our world is interconnected. Our world is interdependent, and our world is fragile.”

A pandemic can spread throughout the globe in a matter of months, a gang of hackers can disrupt the fuel supply of the eastern seaboard, and one country’s carbon emissions can threaten the sustainability of the Earth, she added.

“This, midshipmen, is the era we are in, and it is unlike any era that came before. … The challenge before us now is how to mount a modern defense to these modern threats.”

Harris’s address was a far cry from former President Trump’s in 2018, when he told graduates that his efforts in the Oval Office have boosted the nation’s prestige in the eyes of the world and that other countries “are respecting us again.”

Presidents and vice presidents give the commencement speeches to the service academies on a rotating basis. The ceremony was not held in person last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Harris also touched on climate change, describing it as “a very real threat to our national security,” as well as cybersecurity threats, calling the Colonial Pipeline hack earlier this month “a warning shot” in what the graduates will soon face.

She also referred to the Biden administration’s vaccination effort and the military’s role in distributing and administering the shot, telling the class “the American people are depending on you.”

“We saw this during COVID-19 when Americans watched how members of our military helped vaccinate our nation, because you know biological threats like pandemics and infectious diseases are yet another threat in this era,” she said.