U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris focused on the challenges of the pandemic, climate change and cybersecurity threats during her keynote speech to graduates at the US Naval Academy on Saturday, the first by a woman at the 175-year-old institution.

Harris, the nation’s first female Vice President and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the office, said the pandemic “has accelerated our world into a new era.” “It has forever impacted our world,” she said.

“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 world in a matter of months, a gang of hackers can disrupt the fuel supply, and one country’s carbon emissions can threaten the sustainability of the Earth, the Vice President said. “This, midshipmen, is the era we are in, and it is unlike any era that came before,” Ms. Harris added.

“So, the challenge now, the challenge before us now is how to mount a modern defence to these modern threats.” Ms. Harris described the cyberattack earlier this month that shut down the nation’s largest fuel pipeline as “a warning shot” in what the new Navy and Marine Corps officers will be facing.

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