Reid Hoffman

So I think US defense spending should reduce, right? I think that would actually be a good thing. It's one of the problems that we have in American politics and that we have neither the political will to do that on either the left or the right side. Like, if I anticipate anything going to be happening in the next administration, it will be increase in defense spending versus decrease.

Despite all that, we're going to have fiscal discipline and we're going to reduce costs and we're going to bring this. A massive amount of that comes from the Department of Defense. And the way that I would do it is I would try to, because basically the business America's business, it's you want to be investing in things that create the future businesses.

The military industrial complex is not the business that you most want to be investing in. And so how do you essentially do that?

Yes. If you said, where should Doge focus? The answer is, there's a lot of massive misspending within the Department of Defense. Now, part of that is not just the Department of Defense's fault. Let's take a specific. We should not be building aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers themselves cost billions. The planes on them are more billions. They put thousands of American lives on them.

And in the modern world, you have to Sure, an aircraft carrier is great for bullying sedan, which is not a particularly good use of billions of dollars military. In a real conflict, one or two hypersonic missiles, which are like $2 million each, can take out an aircraft carrier. So if you said, what should I be doing to save money in American events?

It's like, let's stop building aircraft carriers. But of course, part of the political reason that doesn't happen is because the states and Congress people, like one of the things that happens frequently is the Department of Defense says, well, we should stop these programs. And Congress says, no, we're continuing them because this is where, you know, you're spending money in our district is.

And that's the kind of thing that if Doge had guts, they would go to.

Look, I think it's better for the world and better for Europe if Europe increases its defense spending. Now, I understand it was the right thing after World War II and the right thing with the Marshall Plan and the right thing to create interdependence to do that because you wanted to make sure that in this area that created two world wars. that you created strength of ties and bonds.

It's part of what the European Union's about, trade, mutual prosperity. But now that that's there, it's good for Europe to get to its rightful place, both in, for example, defense against terrible players like Russia and things, but also in the world to be another important force in the world, and that means increasing the defense spending. And that includes Ukraine?

Look, my view is that the Ukrainian people have the right to fight for their own self-defense. It is not for us to say, oh, Ukraine was always just part of Russia. That's for the Ukrainians to say, not for us. That's a repetition of evils that human beings frequently do. You should be clear about this. And people have a right to articulate their own self-determination, I think.

Supporting him in that is, I think, a good thing.

Well, it's another area that's a political third rail in the US because older people vote at much higher percentages. And so therefore, figuring out how to, like, for example, again, if you said if Doge had guts, they'd go look at this area to say, well, how should we rationalize this on a cost per quarter?

quality month of life and you go, well, look, there's a whole bunch of money that's spent on these last three to six months of life. Let's reduce the spending on that and say that is not a public expense. And let's increase, for example, preventative and other things that are much more dollar focus.

Now, again, unfortunately, I would predict that they're not going to do that because it's a political third rail and it requires courage and other things to go into it.

So the right way, I think, to think about this from an American or any other perspective is to say China bans competition in China from Meta, Twitter, etc., And so the right way to say is like, look, if you're banning our companies, we should ban yours. Entirely a commercial question, not a question around like, well, that's a Chinese social media company.

Because I actually believe that there's a different question when you say, well, what should be the rules of governance for social media companies when you get around the world? And I think there should be some transparency, responsiveness to local laws, et cetera. But I think that's the right thing to do.

Well, it gets back to the tariffs question, which is you want people to be playing on a fair and balanced playing field. If you're country X is denying licenses to country Y, then country Y should do that to country X, right? As just a general thing to get back to a playing field. And by the way, there's lots of bad actors in the world. Yes.

Sometimes, by the way, when the bully hits you, the only way to stop the bully from hitting you again or hitting someone else is to hit them back pretty hard, right? Because then they learn, oh, there's consequences. Sometimes the rule of the five-year-old playing ground is actually, in fact, the rule that countries live by.

So this is maybe my greatest hope out of an administration that promises to be a wrecking ball to a history of regulation, because the things that we have done in regulating nuclear have been destructive to, for example, climate change, because you're using a lot more coal versus nuclear. I mean, we see great examples in France as how to use nuclear.

Well, the technology has advanced over the decades in nuclear fission. You know, people have invented nuclear fission plants that are powered. It's called TerraPower powered on nuclear waste. So it's a way of consuming the waste and getting rid of it and converting it into power. There's all of these things that are really, really good to do.