Casey Handmer

Thank you.

It's great to be here finally.

Do you think that China is better at capital allocation than the United States?

Do you think the Chinese business environment is better for business than in the United States?

Well, people say, oh, look, they're so much better at building high-speed trains than the United States.

Right.

I would never hold up a flag saying I'm really good at building high-speed trains.

That is just a sign that you're really bad at capital allocation.

Why would you devote, in 2025...

so much industrial effort and money, right?

Which would count for something.

Well, they're in a similar situation to Europe, but unlike the United States.

So the United States...

is the luckiest goddamn country on earth because it's surrounded on two sides by oceans and on the other two sides by like friendly allies, right?

China's surrounded by 15 countries who are mostly hostile to it, right?

With no good like mountain ranges or rivers or anything to really separate them.

And then they get all their oil, almost all their oil from the Middle East, right?

In countries that they don't control, don't have strong diplomatic relationships with on fleets of oil tankers that they can't defend because their Navy doesn't have the ability to operate effectively in the Indian Ocean.

We're not currently working with China.

We don't plan to, but the physics is very obvious.