library for inviting both of us to. >> my thanks to you all and thank you ken and thank you everybody. >> i want to welcome you to the historical society's the slide

defense of the commentator to discuss his fascinating new book "electric city" the lost history of ford and edison's american utopia. i am kathy jones one of the adult service librarians here in the library. we have programs coming up that you can learn about and register at hudson library. oregon i'm very excited to say we'll be offering live morning meditation yoga classes outside by our patio this summer. those classes will be on the web site this week if you'd like tol sign up. a reminder for your joining us tonight you can put your questions in the q&a at the bottom of the screen and if your joining us on facebook put your questions in the chat and we will get to as many as we have time for it. onean more thing our local independent oak store is selling copies of tonight's book and there's a link in the chat if you'd like to purchase one. tonight i'm delighted to welcome

thomas hager publishers weekly called "electric city" the book were discussing tonight an illuminating portrait of a little-known or in american history. mr. hager is an award-winning author of numerous books on the history of science and medicine including the alchemy of air the scientific discovery that fueled the rise of and hand drugs to plants powders and pills have shaped the history of medicine. he is a courtesy associate professor of journalism at the university of oregon so please give a warm welcome to thomas hager. >> thank you. it's good to be here and to chat about "electric city." i'll have you know that i write mostly about the history of

sciences and this book is really less about science per se although there's a fair developmentev of electricity industry in the book. it's more about people and i just want to make sure that we are on and working here. >> you are good. >> are we good? okay great. i got an error message. so it's more about people and i got what i thought was a fascinatingti american history d the history of the united states. the two main characters in the look are henry ford the auto industrialist that built ford motor company made for the number one selling car in the

world in 1920 and his buddy and late life friend thomas edison. thomas edison, we all know him as the inventor of the electric incandescent light, the lightbulb we don't use electric olds like heay invented but it d a tremendous effect on the development of technology. it wasn't just the light old. edison also did the photograph and versions of the camera movement projection and sees american life as fundamental to who we are as people and he did that through his inventions. he was known as the wizard of menlo park. menlo park in new jersey is where he had a laboratory where he made hisma inventions and by

the time of the setting of this book and the book is set in the years just after world war i so five years on either side of 1920 is at the heart of this book and during that time edison was an elder statesman in america. he was one of the best loved americans that live during that time. everybody knew the name of thomas edison and everybody knew what edison had done for the united states so it was quite an event when edison teamed up with henry ford to create this project which is the subject of my book. it happened like this. edison and ford, and in ford was

a younger man and one of the first jobs forgot was when he was a young man working at thomas edison's electric company in detroit, michigan. ford had grown up in michigan. he was a farm boy, abe poor farm boy and he hated farm work. he hated the drudgery of farm work and he hated working outside in all weather and the things of the farmer has to do to make a living and there were things that henry ford didn't like our at henry ford was a smart kid and he had a natural aptitude for machinery.

he loved tinkering with machines, early machines. he grew up and came of age in the 1880s and 1890s and during that period steam engines were all the thing. steam engines were huge planting machinery that are used in factories and out on the farm they had steam engines on wheels that they could roll from farm to farm and fire up to help the harbor city could have an engine to help on the farm. they werero like locomotives. they were called road locomotives as a matter of fact. they had a dire wheels but the engines themselves were the size of railroad locomotives but a

little smaller. they would roll from farm to farm and then they would use the steam engine to power a series of belts and pulleys to do the various farm chores that needed to be done for the harvest. these road r locomotives were henry's dream machine. he was obsessed with road locomotives. he learned everything he could about how they worked and he was a genius and putting them together. he lived on the farm without machinery and he stuck with machinery and left the farm work behind. he couldn't wait to get out of his parents farm and into a machine shop in detroit and he ended up working for thomas edison. thomas and edison was at the height of his career and ford he

met as a young nobody and he started working with edison. he was talented of course and his superiors thought henry ford ford -- brought henry ford to an edison company event of which thomas edison was present. edison is established and older, rich and famous and ford is a nobody. the two of them started a conversation with the young whiz kid who is adept with machines and the older guy who understands inventions and they start talking and what they start talking about is an idea that henry ford has four building a newld kind of

automobile and ford has been playing around with the idea of powering an automobile with gasoline and he's inventing an improved gasoline engine. he's putting together bits and pieces in his spare time and trying to make this revolutionary new gas engine and edison assassinated. he listens to this young man ans he tanks boy he's really got something going on. the two of them become friends and it was years later after ford the assembly line is a way

of making the model to cut down costs tremendously and ford put it together with his automobile. everybody wanted the model t. this was a revolution in america because up until the time of henry ford automobiles were tremendously expensive and they were virtually luxury is, toys. what henry ford did was he created an automobile that could work on a farm and he could take it out on an dirt rode. it was easy to fix and everything was very durable and veryel reliable. suddenly everybody wanted one.

between 1910 and 1920 in that decade the model t became the first best-selling anomaly best-selling car. it was a tremendous moneymaker for ford and all the money went to ford and by the time 1920 came around it was industrialized on a scale unlike anywhere else in the world. he was the richest man in the world and one of the most humble so that is the setting for the story. an older edison and younger ford both of them interested in technology inventing new ways of powering industry and they tell the story of how they try to create a utopian city in the middle of america that would incorporate all of their best ideas and turn those ideas into

a new way of living for americans. so i want to take just a moment and talk about not just american technology but about american society. my book is about an experiment that to great and powerful men try to undertake on a massive scale in northern alabama on the tennessee river in northern alabama and the tennessee river is a big part of american history. it's associated with daniel boone list of the allegheny and appalachian mountains and it's a huge source of stories about

what happened in the tennessee valley. by the time that ford and edison 's parts of the united states is tremendously i guess you know you could use the word backward. it was almost as if that part of united states had gone back to the 1700's and had not advanced to the 20th century. part of the problem was the civil war is and it never rebuild slowly. part of the reason for the people there were farmers and much of the farming happened and

the hills in western tennessee and the southern part of tennessee in the northern part of alabama. and what people make fun of now as hillbillies and it was at tough way to make a living farming a small farm. the soil was in very good and the roads weren't very good and there was noer electricity and there is no help there. people lived in cat and that had big holes in the rep and they haveve descriptions of people tt lived in that part of the country and it really is like looking back a couple i hundred years. they wash their clothing in a metal washing pots with a far -- a fire in it to heat the water and they had very, very poor

communication with the rest of the world. so when henry ford and thomas edison decided to go there and change their lives he wasn't just a typical 1920s down it was like going back to 1780 or 1800 announcing to the people in an area of the tennessee river about the size of england they announced to people in the area that you are going to pull them out of the 1780s and into the 1920s with what fell swoop and they would do it by building the world's biggest dam across the tennessee river and using all of the electricity produced by that dam to power industry without the use of coal. you would use electrical energy which would be entirely clean in

a career plan does what we would callt it now but you would be working with electricity instead of earning call. that was an important step forward because edison and ford broke their vision around the idea of clean renewable energy. they thought that coal was and polluting and it was unhealthy. they want to get away from coal so they were going to build an entire city run to let our city. the world's largest dam in the world's largest power plant in the world's largest source of electricity with power industries up and down the tennessee river but the plan with a new kind of city. they wanted to reshape society around the idea that it would be a new kind of working place and very quickly what henry ford had

in mind that he was thinking about this experiment in northern alabama and what a mistake he had made with ford ir ff ford factories, huge factories making model t's were in and around detroit and dearborn in the subject -- which is a suburb of detroit. he built to use huge factories and was in the process of building the worlds biggest factory at the time he was thinking about this experiment in alabama. he built these factories in the cities to completely change the nature of detroit. these factories employed so many people in such a small area that they created slums. the workers were well-paid and he really cared about his workers. he was very concerned about his workers wages and living wages

by the couldn't help that when you build a huge factory people tend to live in cities and tenements and the result of slum living and along with that and increasing crime and these were things that henry ford hated. he had this idea in mind that america should be much alike the small town midwest america farm town that he grew up in. a few brick buildings downtown on the village green by the pond. this is the ideaan that he wantd for his workers. he thought this was the best way for people lived. he wanted to create that in northern alabama on a vast scale and he wanted to have any

industrial center the city that was 75 miles long employed 1 million workers anyone at all that but without any coal pollution without any crime. he wanted his workers to live on small farms. they would have spare time so they could bring in your own crops and working in an electrically powered industry for the rest of the time. they would have the best of city life and country life at the same time. instead of a single huge factory like he was building in detroit he wanted to bring in small electrical powered factories up esand down the river for 75 mils and around each of those factories would be land leases or sales to workers so they

could have five or 10 acres to farm if they wanted to and they could afford to do it he could he would offer financing for buying the land and he would rent them farm machinery. when they were done with their crops they could go to their steady job and make a regular wage and educate their kids and so on so he built this vision around a new kind of american life. that is what he and thomas and edison tried to create in northern a alabama. this book is the story of how they tried to do that and it tells the story of why they failed. finally the book tells what happens next. the stories move eventually to the creation of one of the greatest achievements of government in the united states a project called the tennessee valley authority the tva which

many of you have heard of. this book explains how the tva started. eventually ford despite his popularity despite his money eventually ford's plan ran head-on into the u.s. government which also had a claim on the power generation and the tennessee valley. for five years forward in the u.s. government fought each other over who would control this area. would ford get his wish and build the city or would government stop him and do something else? eventually the government found a way to stop henry ford and they built their own version of

this new way of living. the book tells the story of how the tva use those ideas as well. and before you get into q&a along with everything else that was going on in the early 1920s as ford was trying to make a national name for the government to give him what he wanted to he could build his city he wanted control over a vast area and he wanted the government to pay for most of it. that didn't happen but what did happen was that henry ford decided the easiest way for him to get what he wanted might be if he ran for president. so this s tells the story of how close henry ford came to be the

president of the united states and he was l a serious candidate for several years in the mid-1920s in the number of observers and i admit i'm one of them thought he had a good chance as anyone of being president of the united states. he was on a platform that incorporated the idea of the select trick city wanted to build on his vision for america. that was the vision he wanted to run on and it didn't happen and i tell the story in the book but we have a president in 1920s it would have been someone who didn't have a day of government service behind him and he came out of the private industry who is accustomed to running a

one-man loss shop. he would have run the government the same way. and yet he was phenomenally popular with people across the middle of america, farmworkers, workers and factory workers people who looked upon him ass a have lovedhe would the idea of him being the president of the united states. that almost happened and the reason it didn't happen was tied up with the story of his utopian city. that was the book that i got into in the bookok that resulted in the longer and richer story of it.

>> the first question is how did you get interested in this? >> how did i get interested? it was sort of an accident. you had mentioned our previous book that i had written called the alchemy of air and it was about the development, while this sounds funny when i sit like this but the development of fertilizer in the united statesb and worldwide. and it turns out to be more interesting then that would sound. for various reasons but i learned about the fertilizer industry in the book was kind of ahead especially with farmers. so i got invited to talk at a lot of places and one of the places i went to us in northern alabama. a

i'd never been to northern alabama and my life and i had this idea and there was a book in the 1930s a detailed life in appalachia in this very poor part of united states and my mindset was this is a really a skill and i got to alabama and landed a national arab word in the town of huntsville and northern alabama. it was taken to a small city called florence alabama on the bank of the tennessee river and it was a delightful place and people were wonderful.

it was a four-star international hotel on a hill and i was blown away. this was a complete surprise to me and it was actually very prosperous. it was very up-to-date. therere are more -- per square mile than any other place the united states at that time. they did international and agricultural research so anyway i was fascinated and i gave my talk and am getting ready to go back to the airport to fly back home to oregon and a local fellow who is a driver picked me up in the car and we were heading to the airport and we have a little extra time.

he had a fertilizer history so he took me out on the little detour and we went down the road to this hope the remains of an old or lizer factory and that's what he wanted to show me. it was out in the middle of the field of what had been a gigantic factory. that was interest thing to me that the story behind this is how did it end up in a field in northern alabama? the driver because we have a couple of extra minutes knew how interested i was drove me a little ways away to another field in northern alabama and then noticelo the yellowing gra. we go out in this field and then

we saw the field was actually a network of streets that have been laid out like city streets with curbs and old-time fire hydrant. and street signs which people say were never built and never finish. this was the remains of the city called ford city a city that had been planted that started construction and it never been completed. here i am in almost like being in an egypt looking at the desert and it was like a civilization that never occurred. as a combination of the city and the gigantic remains of this huge factory and it made me wonder well what happened here and what was the story? so naturally i went to henry

ford and that led to the rest of the book. as writers do you sometimes pick up the thread and then you follow the thread. >> a veryu interesting story. >> i was surprised. >> here's another question. what similarity finney is there between the young henry ford in the days of elon musk for mark zuckerberg? >> that's a good question. we think that today's titans of tech elegy are new a new thing but they are really not. ford and edison to where the titans of technology of their time and i think the parallels are obvious. all these men -- zuckerberg i will leave aside. elon musk is an innovator in

zuckerberg i know less about. elon musk has a reckless imagination and the soon to elect their cars in space and the hyperloop technology and all kinds of stuff. he reminds me very much of henry ford and thomas edison. these people had success in one technological field. they change lives for a lot of americans and their restless mind couldn't deal with the success they had in the moved on. they tried to conquer new areas always testing the boundaries of what he couldar do i think and e haven't seen the last of his innovations i'll bet. henry ford enters with the model

t and the assembly-line plant. then he wanted to stretch himself out into this role and i think that happens to people who have been highly successful. they begin to think their ideas because they worked for them and one area their ideas and their thinking could probably beat better for everybody so they take their successes and apply it to larger and larger things. and that was certainly true of henry ford. henry ford wanted to take his ideas about what was good for people and he wanted to apply that to essentially his own

private -- and it didn't happen but it would be interesting to see if it had happened it was an interesting experiment because had he gotten what he wanted and an enormous part of the united states was in control of the industrialist similar to having a 75-mile long factory that employed 1 million people and completely dominated an area of the center a united states. that domination was something that didn't happen and was allowed to happen in the 1920s. so i see definite parallels. >> you mentioned ford becoming president.

do you think he would have been a good president and do you thinkk he would have made this plan happened had he been elected? >> yes. had he been elected he would have made it. i know that. the only thing standing in his way and the only reason it i didn't happen that he was president that a small group of concerned senators in this u.s. congress a small group of senators got together. henry ford was a very very smart guy and he did a very good job of -- he was a camping buddy of warren g. harding and calvin coolidge. warren harding was a pro-business republican. he and henry ford went camping

together. they talk the same language and they were buddies and as long as warren harding was president everything was going his way and it looked great and then warren harding died suddenly. he passed away of what was probably heart disease and calvin coolidge became president that time. calvin coolidge was much -- and that created a problem. calvin coolidge didn't follow through and give ford his support. instead a group of senators in the u.s. senate appointed an opposition group and they were people who wanted government control to the private control in what turned out to be a series of of more than a dozen

dams on the river. it turned into more than a dozen enormous projects. many senators wanted that to be owned by the people of united states and they didn't want to be owned by henry ford so they formed an opposition headed by a fabulous guy one of my favorite people. everybody should know the name of george morris. the senator from a nowhere state but he is a heroic figure. he's a maverick and never let anyone tell them what to think. stop the lies and falsehoodshe when he saw them it didn't matter how n powerful you were f

he thought you were lying he would tell you it was actually george norris -- however that one man george norris and his friend. there's a good chance he would have gotten what he wanted even without being president and as the presidential election heated up after harding's death and ford considered running the calculus was that if you got into the white house he could make his dream happen on the tennessee river and make his utopian city happen. he's would get the votes they needed to and he came close anyway.

he would have the levers to pull tom: it happen. i think he would have been president if he had run seriously. i think the reason he didn't run was yet made a deal withth calvn coolidge a backroom deal and i show the evidence in the book. henry ford and calvin coolidge president of the united states got together at the white house and patched to deal and henry ford agreed not to run for president and that meant that calvin coolidge could run and in exchange calvin coolidge was going to push for ford's control of this project and that was the deal that was struck. it was controversial and there's evidence that it happened but what happened was george norris got ahold of the scandal.

he'd found out about the secret meeting and he blasted all over the media. once it became a public scandal calvin coolidge had lost and forded already said he wasn't going to run for president. he took them out -- himself out of these running for president prematurely and he never got this project. had he been president he would have been a president unlike any president we have ever had or he would have been in autocrat. he would have been unable to deal effectively with groups like congress or the press or anyone else. he would have just wanted his own way. would have vanished using for years. and in fairness for didn't really wanthe to be president. he knew he was lucky to have the

worlds largesthe one-man band running this enormous a profitable company and he could do whate he wanted and tell anybody what he wanted. he didn't have to kiss babies so he wasn't built to be a -- and he knew it and especially his wife claire. his wife was dead set against henry ford being president and she was a very political figure in his life so when she told them she wanted to become president. >> you should mention the press and you wrote in your book that he was a publicity genius which contradicts what you just said. >> i said he wouldn't be able to workrk with them as president ad as a private citizen and as an industrialist he maintained a

very large public-relations position in the company. it grew over the years. in addition to everything else he had the most positive media coverage it could imagine and the other thing that henry ford was doing he had this folksy guy who had a sixth-grade education and his nickname at the time was uncle henry and he looked like a member of your family. he spoke plainly and he didn't try to obfuscate. he was an enemy of wall street and the bankers which most workers in america were at the time as well and americans loved him. that was in great part due to the fact that he had armies working for him that grew over

time to include essentially what people said was a private police force that would investigate enemies as well. the point is he worked at that level. he did not know how to work with the press and the public circle. he'd never been a public servant and that's a differentnt role. you could argue the point but in any case it's the difference between politics and business. he was highly successful in one field. to be fair to journalists at the time were wire reporters at the time. they reported public interest

features. they focused on that because they knew uncle henry is important to the media too. had he he become president there would be an automaticom oppositn in another story told in the book is about a week point for ford. he was a man of the people in his persona and he did terrific damage i think i using his public relations arm to attack jewish citizens around the world

to bring, while his form of anti-semitism that was a week point that he had as well. not every group in america was behind him. farmers were behind him the midwest and the south were very much behind ford and the east coast and the west coast were not. he was a popular figure in a politician that would then difficult. >> we have another question here. did the alabama plant city have any relationship to fordlandia in brazil and can you compare and contrast these two sites? >> fordlandia was a book that came out a few years ago which was another project and this

time to make the river empire in south america in brazil so thank you for bringing that up. i think both of those port -- fordlandia happened later after ford was blocked from his doing his utopian city and that plan fell through and the government stepped in he looked for other ways to use that same energy in one of the projects he did was fordlandia. i think that the city on the tennessee river happened i don't think fordlandia would have. it was an attempt to create a huge project and that was was the scaled a ford like to play out. he did the enormous projects. the irony of it i think the

irony is the end result of all of this planning was probably best exemplified by the park city built in michigan near his factory. when he decided to do and he put a lot of energy into late in his life after the story that i tell he put enormous energy into creating the kind of america that he wanted as a theme park so if you ever go to dearborn i recommendhe you go to the ford museum. the ford museum is a beautiful facility and it has every car that ford ever made i'mm pretty sure and a number of machines and a tremendous american success story henry ford and the

ford company. others of third component which is eventually a theme park and it is an idea that caught cool fords fancy later in life that creates the kind of america that he thought was the cruel america. the birthplaces of famous americans like the house where he grew up. he lived on a farm in michigan and he created a little arm around it. he moved it to dearborn and said it and the park and i think nathaniel hawthorne's birthplaces they are in the school room, the wright brothers

bicycles. he would collect buildings like other people collect -- he created this fabulous wonderful place where you can see american architectureme changing. there's a central part of the it's in the form o of -- which s like henry ford's dream of famerica. it has a white house with a pond and beautiful houses with the colonial in and it's laid out. it's remarkable to me that he went from wanting to build a 75-mile working city into this charming but unusual theme park.

if you're ever in those parts -. >> we have one more question. do you have any knowledge or information of the adversarial relationship henry ford had with john the rock of eller and if so can you share the story? >> i didn't do the rockefeller but i have looked at john rockefeller for other projects. he was the rock of the rockefeller foundation from that standpoint that the only overlap that i came across for this book between ford and rockefeller had to do with the germans.

it's another little known story and one that i haven't fully research'm and not really readyo talk about other than this in the outline. henry ford made his money with cars and john d rockefeller made his money out of -- around the timeca of world war i it looked like the world was running out of oil. and there was great worry that the world was going to run dry of w oil. there was no more oil than rockefeller wouldn't make any money and -- wouldn't make any money at the same time just after world war i the germans were looking for a way to build

their industry and they came up with a plan to make synthetic oil. they were going to perfect a method of varied difficult technologically to take coal from german coalmines and turn it into automobile fuel and gasoline or they could turn it into airplane fuel so they would make gasoline for cars out of coal. there was tons of coal around the world and that project for synthetic oil was very interesting both to rockefeller and two ford and the records are difficult and a lot of records have been destroyed or lost are

not available to the public around this project but a simple essentially they collaboratively worked as the biggest tension in the world which was developing this synthetic oil in germany. ig far been bored and standard oil may happen there some evidence that they did collaborate in developing this new agency. there were shares in many exchanged intellectual property. the problem was as those on that later came to power in the early 1930s and ig far been became a industrial -- and he worked at

ford and rockefeller's standard oil became problematic. there some evidence that a continued into the air as well. i wish i could pick up the records and i don't know of anybody ever will. however that overlap did occur. other than that. >> one last question. for those of us who may not know muchse about the tva how much of ford streams were developed by the government and what was that is in's involvement in the industry? >> a good question.

edison i believe helped ford with his ideas as a favor and once the going got rough and the congress did in stiffening its oppositionen some of edison's thinking came under attack. he pretty much dropped out before the government family took over the project. the question is what did the tva do and that is covered at length in the book. it's an interesting question about the relationship between public and private projects in the united states. this is a large-scale project that involves a lot of people and a lot of money and power in the central part of united states and northern alabama and

it naturally raise concerns about public control over public resources. one of the resources was the question of the rivers up on the public control of rivers connected to interstate commerce and flood control and all the things came into play because if henry ford had control of the dams on w the river he would hae power -- with the development before public or for private and these questions to resume today and they are still argued about today. is it more efficient or is government were concerned about the real value of public

resources and who should be in charge of a large project like this? it came out in favor of the government. the gummer -- the governor took over the prospect and four dropped out and the government took over. ford designed the tva this huge government project that went into effect when franklin delano roosevelt became president. the depression hit the south worse than most other parts of the country. it was already an area that was economically troubled in the depression was crushing people in the united states. ford promised economic revival.

what happened was the government came in and finish the dam but they finish them in a different way. they weren't just concerned with electric power although that was part of it. theyhe were concerned with the devastating floods and they were concerned with irrigation and to parks and the leaks that though the hind him and what fdr wanted to do which was an important part of his new deal for america as he wanted to create jobs during a depression but do it in ways that benefited everyone. so the leaks are established and there are more coastlines right now on these leaks in north alabama than there are in the rest of united states.

the project got finished and the electric power began to flow. industries began to come in. they were industries that he would would not have chosen that required a lot of electric power. and as i said earlier when you go down there now it's a wonderful area. it's just a lovely area. it is caught up with the rest of united states and yes there are real questions about whether henry ford would have -- and the dynamics of that is kind of complex but would we really have been worse off under henry ford? he has one of the most enormous success stories but i would

argue it would have been just as good under henry ford and in some ways more efficient. you have public versus private and there is no easy answer. tba -- tva was wonderful. so we end up with a very difficult question. >> well i think it's time for us to wrap it up tonight. i want to show you the book you want to look for thomas hager's book and i want to thank you thomas hager for being with us and thank you for everyone who joined us tonight. i hope to see you again soon in

our next author talks. >> i started writing this book a year before covid-19 began and i think one of the points of this book is what is happening with

covid-19 is not the extraordinary event that they claim it is but it is but rather accommodating event of a lot of unraveling that's been happening over the last few years. it kind of chronicles and i don't want is a total collapse that partial unraveling of global health infrastructure and all the things we put in place which includes a lot of vaccine diplomacy and vaccine diplomacy i defined broadly as corporation between nations around global health. vaccines are powerful tools in global health and the beginning of it goes with the beginning of vaccines. when the first small pat -- first smallpox vaccine was discovered he was called on by the british and the french during the napoleonic wars and

thomas jefferson used his vaccine as a goodwill gesture to send a vaccine to the lewis and clarke exploration in the wilderness with native american groups and the more modern version began with albert saban who many don't realize developed the oral polio vaccine gently with the soviets at the height of the cold war. the ussr got permission from the state department and the soviet counterpart whose son works at the fda and is a friend and colleague and got permission to work together. that's where the vaccine was developed shown to be safe and effective and led to the licensure of the polio vaccine and it happened again for smallpox eradication. we found a way to scale up

preproduction of the smallpox version to take into tropical areas so wouldn't be destroyed by heat. americans believe the smallpox eradicate -- eradication campaign. it always relied on international cooperation and cooperation between countries which generally did not agree ideologically and were willing to put aside their ideologies to work together and this is something that i am so impressed with. how can we dusted off and give it a fresh coat of paint and reinvigorate it and i had to roll as u.s. science envoy at the state department at the white house in 2014 to 2016 in the obama white house was a very difficult time in the middle east when the occupation was

starting at the height of the syrian conflict and the proxy wars between saudi arabia beginning in yemen so is a very awful time and looking how we can cooperate between majority nations for vaccine development. we have made drivers but the point is i think this is the time we need it more than ever and we can talk about what we are seeing now with what rush is doing and what china is doing to some extent and now this very antiscience disinformation campaign launched by russia so how do we walk all this back and restore vaccine diplomacy to its rightful place because of its track record of success?