Nilay Patel

Roland's vision is for Siemens to automate the entire factory process, upstream and downstream of actually making things.

And you'll hear him describe that outcome as fairly utopian.

Smooth, seamless, optimal operation.

Very German.

But I wanted to press him on how dystopian that sounds to a lot of us.

Because in Rowan's vision of pure automation, it seems like there's a lot of people who just don't have jobs anymore.

And the ones who do have jobs don't really have a lot of autonomy or fulfillment from them, because they're basically just doing what AI tells them to do.

So we talked about that pretty directly.

And if that's not a lot of complicated, heavy decoder ideas already, well, Siemens is also a government and defense contractor on both sides of the Atlantic, and a company whose growth historically has been tied directly to free trade and globalization in the post-war era.

There's a lot going on right now that challenges how that world works, especially as tensions keep rising between the U.S.

and Europe.

So I asked him directly, has Siemens gamed out what it will do if NATO collapses?

Because that's not as far-fetched an idea as it used to be.

As you can tell, there's a lot in this one, and Roland was game for it all.

I think you'll leave with a lot to think about.

Certainly more to think about whenever you see all those Siemens logos all over the place.

Okay, Siemens CEO Roland Busch.

Here we go.

Roland Bush, you are the president and CEO of Siemens.

Welcome to Decoder.