Speaking months after witnessing Egypt's January 25th revolution firsthand—where university students used Facebook, Twitter, and SMS to peacefully remove a thirty-year regime in just eighteen days—Zewail made a powerful case for science as a diplomatic tool. As a U.S. Science Envoy to the Middle East appointed by President Obama, he had toured the region and seen both the potential and the urgent need for scientific investment. Zewail argued that America's greatest strength wasn't its military but its soft power: the value system of individual liberty, justice, and human rights, amplified through scientific leadership. He pointed to Egypt's announcement of a new City for Science and Technology on three hundred acres of land, modeled after Caltech, as evidence that scientific partnerships could achieve what military interventions could not. Through the power of knowledge, he argued, we can efface ignorance and bind cultures and civilizations—a vision that was especially poignant coming from a man who had bridged the Egyptian and American worlds through science.