Relentless
01:12:29 · Ty Morse, Aaron Slodov, Sam D'Amico
[01:12:29] S2: Let's end on Apple has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the past, you know, fifteen, twenty years basically building out the entire supply chain in China. How do we, as a nation, become comparatively competitive against that backdrop? [01:12:43] S1: So I will I will caveat that with... It wasn't really a forced error in some ways to to do that. They actually they did try to do some of it here. [01:12:56] S0: They did it here in the eighties. [01:12:58] S1: Yeah. And they they kind of had to do what they did, which is very unfortunate. And it's because of the systemic problems that we architected around making it easy for them to do what they wanted to do here. So, again, I think a huge amount of this will ultimately come down to, you know, good industrial policy. And I think, unfortunately, you can't just, like, unwind what they did. Right? Like, they did it. They have, all of the process and tacit knowledge behind that. And the question is, you know, at this point, do do we wanna answer back somehow? And, like, what form is that going to take? And how are we executing on it?
01:13:48 · Sam D'Amico
[01:13:48] S0: And I would say a big part of the story too is, American... Let's call it American policy minds. I think as you go west, you're more mysterious and unknowable to DC. So if you go to California, they think we're a bunch of wackos and hippies. But if you go to but if you go to if you go to China, it's like unknowable. You think of like a totalitarian, like, you know, monolith, even though it's like each individual city is run totally differently by different, like, different different people and like it's a it's a very... It's much more diverse place than people think. And so I think the like not understanding how China works is a systemic problem both in DC and for Western technologists as well. Like, you could argue that, like, one of Elon's biggest assets is that he actually understands how China works. He understands how to manufacture stuff at scale in China. And, like, I would also argue that a lot of people, and I don't wanna call out, you know, some of our friends and stuff like that, but basically it's like people being like, well, I don't need to learn that because they're bad or something like that. And it's like, China's an amazing place with a lot of great people, and you can learn how to make make stuff at scale there. And I would strongly encourage people to go visit and like, you know, learn learn how this stuff works because it's like, I don't think it... I think people... It hasn't dawned on enough people how America is not the center of the known universe for technology in the physical world anymore. Now, think we still are in the digital world, but in the physical world, that's not the case. And there is like core technologies and ways of doing things and like the the the idea of like your engineers are next to your manufacturing line. Like, lot of this stuff is like, we kind of talk about it in the abstract and kind of like the the Gundo sort of context. And like, obviously, there's well intentioned people trying to do this in The United States, but the scale of the operation and the like understanding of how stuff works, it's like, in some sense, it's like, I just strongly encourage people who, like, want to learn how to build advanced stuff to, like, go there and build advanced stuff there. Absorb the tacit knowledge that is, you know, it's very hard to gain that tacit knowledge in The United States.
01:15:51 · Sam D'Amico
You need to probably spend a billion dollars of, you know, money that is under your control to do it. But you could do it much cheaper if you went to Shenzhen and like lived at a factory and got a consumer product out the door. So I think that that's something that like some people have shut off their brains to that reality of, like, of, like, okay, I'm gonna basically say, like, you know, I'm not gonna play ball with the Chinese system, you know, all those other stuff. It's like, no. This is the way that advanced hardware is made today. You can choose to participate in that world or you can or you can, you know, go Ted Kaczynski and live in a a cabin in the woods. But, you know, that's the situation. And so... And I think that people have kind of, like, plugged their ears, blindfolded themselves, to this reality where it's like, no, like, some- the most many advanced manufacturers- manufacturers in the world are there. And if you want to build stuff fast, cheap, and at scale, that's where- that's basically where you end up going. And if you wanted to fix that problem, it's the way you have to fix that problem is to understand- How it works.... How it works. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.