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You know it's a collision of factors that's lead the United State's government to put
young people at the very top of it's agenda everywhere that we do business around the
world. It's demographics, where more than half of the world's population is under the age
of 30, but it's more than that. It's a collision of those demographics with an unprecedented
access to technology and with globalization that, yes has allowed young people to transform
political realities on the ground, sometimes very much for the better. Allowed them to
be champions of good governance, of democracy, of things we all stand for, and to as entrepreneurs
and innovators, be a backbone of economic growth all around the world. But we also see
as a result of those colliding factors, a mismatch of expectation and opportunity all
around the world, where young people grow up with unfettered views of good governance
and transparency and economic opportunity that very often isn't present within their
own borders, within their own communities and that's especially true for the 90 percent
of that majority under the age of thirty all around the world, that is in the developing
world. So in those cases where there is that mismatch and that frustration you see young
people as a ripe target for recruitment by extremists and criminal groups and a source
of instability that can be at the heart of many of our shared challenges. So it was a
recognition of that double-edged sword and of the need to tap into the tremendous positive
potential that youth holds for all of our challenges and the fact that I think we avoid
doing so, in the words of Secretary Clinton, "At our own peril."