Erik Bethel

Elon Musk is an example, but there are many others.

You go to Silicon Valley, and it's really, really smart people that go to Stanford or MIT or whatnot, and they stay here.

Plus, we have an enormous appetite for risk taking.

The risk capital that we have in the United States, the venture capitalists and so forth, are able to, they put money into companies because one of them, out of their portfolio of whatever, 15 companies, is gonna be a unicorn.

And so we have an ecosystem

from the capital markets, the IPO markets, the strength of our financial and commercial and private sector infrastructure is so strong that I don't think anybody's gonna beat it.

And I think, as I mentioned at the beginning of this segment, the battle of ideas, competition ultimately will win the day.

And when you have

the smartest people in the world competing for the best ideas, the best companies, et cetera, we're gonna end up winning.

When you have the state, in the case of China, directing all elements of economic activity, it's doomed to fail.

That's why you have ghost cities of apartments everywhere and things that don't work.

Long-term, we win.

Short-term, I'm much more concerned.

And that's changing.

So there are a lot of bright spots on the horizon.

I think focusing on first principles in the military is important, is an important component of that.

On the private sector side, I think we need wholesale deregulation.

The regulations have gotten so out of hand that there's a reason why companies have moved overseas.

Let's deregulate to the point where things are sensible

I'm not calling for zero regulation.