QuestionerMr. Buffett, you have expressed concern about cyber, biological, nuclear, and chemical attacks, but preventing catastrophe is not getting enough attention. Wouldn't it be a good idea for you to consider funding? A lobbying and educational campaign to promote the public good in this area and counteract industry lobbyists who are often more interested in short-term profits?
WarrenWell, in my view, there is no problem. remotely like the problem of what I call CNBC, cyber nuclear chemical and biological attacks, that either by rogue organizations, even possibly individuals, rogue states, I mean, you know, you think about, you can think about a lot of things, it will happen. I think we've been both lucky and And frankly, the people have done a very good job in government because government is the real protection on this in not having anything since 1945. We came very, very close during the Cuban missile crisis, and I don't know what the odds were, but I do think that if there had been, I can think of many people that they've been in place of either Kennedy or Crucef, we would have had a very different result. The desire of psychotics and megalomaniacs and religious fanatics and whatever to do harm on others is a lot more when you have 7 billion people on earth than when you had 3 billion or so, which is the case when I was born, less than 3 billion. There are plenty of people that would like to cause us huge damage. And I came to that view when I was in my 20s and in terms of my philanthropic efforts, I decided that that was one of two issues that I thought should be the main issue. And I got involved with all kinds of things like the concern union. You supported the Pugwash conference year after year, and you're frankly all by yourself. Union to concern scientists. And I've given some money to the nuclear threat initiative that is going to create a sort of a federal reserve system, a bank to uranium that will take away some of the excuse of the excuse for countries to develop their own highly enriched uranium. So, but it's overwhelmingly a governmental problem when you're dealing. And it should be, and I think it actually has been the top priority for president after president.
QuestionerWarren, I think he also asked, why don't we, Berkshire, spend a lot more time telling the government what it should be doing and thinking?
WarrenWell, I've tried telling all the people. on the people. Nobody disagrees with you on it. They just, it seems sort of hopeless to. I mean, they don't know, they don't know what to do beyond what they're doing. And incident, they've done a lot of things. I mean, that not all gets publicized, but, and I think Kennedy and Khrushchev, I mean, you know, Khrushchev shouldn't have been sending it over to Cuba, but at least he had enough sense when he knew Kennedy meant business. to turn the ships around, but it's, you can't count on there being Kennedy's and crew chefs all the time in charge of things.