Arthur Kroeber

So everything that he has done, particularly since about 2015, 2016, when he really started to see this come into focus, has been let's worry less about the growth target and more about the technology targets.

And particularly after Trump launched his trade war,

And the Biden administration followed that up with a lot of controls on exports of technology to China.

I think the focus got intense because they were saying, oh, the US really wants to prohibit, constrain our technological rise.

They kind of have the ability to do so.

And so, therefore, we have to double down on efforts to replicate all of these core technologies so that we're not reliant on the U.S.

or its allies anymore.

And we just have to go full tilt on technology at all costs, right?

So that was kind of an accelerant approach.

of this tendency.

But then there is also, there is kind of a macroeconomic theory.

So if you go back and read some of the statements that they put out in the late 20-teens about their vision of the future, basically they said all of these technological developments by which they meant investments in, they didn't mean Alibaba and Tencent and all of these great

Internet companies, they meant physical technology, semiconductors, new material, green energy, industrial robots, all this kind of stuff.

Essentially, their view is this is going to be the productivity engine of the future.

And so growth and growth in the overall economy and incomes, it's all going to be driven by these technological investments.

I think that is essentially what they sincerely believe.

I think there are some problems with that, which is that the vast majority of people in economy do not work in those sectors.

You can get very, very good at making semiconductors and industrial robots and whatnot, and the people who work in those industries do extremely well.

But that is a tiny, tiny fraction of the totality of the population.

And how do you have spillovers that enable everyone in the economy, regardless of how remote they are from this engine room of the high-tech sector, to enjoy gains to income, right?