Ep 93: Cold War II & the Race for Technological Supremacy with CrowdStrike Co-Founder Dmitri Alperovitch

24:37But I realized the same reasons were driving Xi Jinping to want to take Taiwan. On a longer timescale, it's not imminent. I think it could happen no earlier than 2028. but that conflict, should it erupt, would have much more devastating effects on American livelihood, on our security, on really the entire globe, right? Immediately, right off the bat, the estimates are that you would lose$10 trillion of value in the global economy if there's a conflict over Taiwan, global depression on levels we haven't seen since the 1930s. So really, really important to try to deter this. And I think the lessons from Russia invading Ukraine are very apt for the conflict in the Pacific.

25:17As a sci-fi fan, you know, I've built a few very large defense companies. So I really enjoyed the introduction of your book because you actually laid out a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2028. Can you walk us a little bit through that scenario and tell us some of what would probably involve in the outcomes? Yeah, so I spent a lot of time on the ground in Taiwan, walking the terrain, getting appreciation for how hard it is to invade this place. And I think people that haven't been there may not get the appreciation. They think, oh, it's a small island, 100 miles off Chinese shore. how hard can it be?

25:46And it's really a hellish place to invade because you've got the strait itself, the Taiwan Strait, a hundred miles that you have to cross. One of the most brutal waters in the world. I mean, half the year, it's basically impassable to anything but large container ships. You've got very shallow waters near any of the beaches. So you can't get any of your ships in close by, close in, uh, to unload troops and logistics. Uh, you've got, uh, mountains, you've got rivers, tunnels, bridges, right? So even if you manage to unload, you've got to fight through a really terrible terrain. This is not the open fields of Ukraine in any way.

26:21And one of the things that was really interesting in doing research for the book is actually looking at an invasion plan of the asylum from 1944. It was put together by the joint staff. It was called Operation Causeway. Of course, at the time, Formosa, as Taiwan was called at the time, was occupied by the Japanese. They had a substantial contingent of forces there. And right after D-Day, right after the success of Normandy, we were starting to look at basically taking the lessons of that and applying it to Taiwan. And D-Day, just to refresh your memory, was about 150, 160 ,000 Allied troops in the first wave crossing the English Channel about the same size as Taiwan Strait, landing on the beaches of Normandy, obviously being successful.

27:01Operation Causeway called for double that number, over 300 ,000. You had twice as many people to invade Taiwan even back then. Huge, huge. And it called for two months of really brutal fighting up the island, suffering about 45 ,000 casualties. We lost about 2 ,500 on D-Day, just to give you a sense. And ultimately, Roosevelt, MacArthur, and others looked at this and said, no, this is too hard, too complex, too risky. We're going to bypass Taiwan and go for Okinawa. Thank goodness we had another way to end the war versus sending lots of people to die in Japan. Right. So this is really, really hard.

27:38It was hard in 1944. You know, 80 years later, it's even harder, of course, with the modern defensive weapons, anti-ship missiles, smart mines, drones, all those capabilities. So this is an incredibly difficult operation for the Chinese to pull off. If they manage to pull it off, it will be the most complex military operation in history. So you have to have that context first and foremost. When you get to the island, you realize that this beach invasion that everyone talks about is basically not doable. The beaches are very small. As I mentioned, the waters next to them are very shallow. More importantly, they can be completely far controlled from the neighboring hills.

28:13So this will be a complete slaughter. And even more importantly, the key to the Normandy invasion was not just landing on the beaches, but establishing those mulberry ports, right? Those floating docks that you could use to bring in armor, logistics to support this massive invasion force. Without that, this would not have worked. You can't do that in the Taiwan Strait. It's too rough. You know, just look at what happened in Gaza when we tried to build a floating port to supply aid to Gaza. It lasted all five days. And the Mediterranean is basically a lake compared to the Taiwan Strait. So the beaches are not doable.

28:46And in fact, back in 1944, that was the conclusion that the Joint Staff came to as well, because their plan called for taking the port, the port in the south that you need to use to unload the massive number of troops. And I believe the same will play out here, that you need to take the port. And particularly now, you have the thing that the U.S. military did not have in 1944. You have the modern port of Taipei that was built right across the strait that leads you right into the city of Taipei, the capital city. You need to take out that port, obviously, if they're going to come get you, because that's how they get you.

29:21Yeah. Now, that port is very critical to the Taiwanese economy. So if they mount, if the Chinese mount an air assault, as I write in the book, against that port and they manage to seize it, as well as the critical airfields, international airport that's not too far from that port and the airport in the city of Taipei itself, that gives them a huge platform to bring in the massive number of troops that you need to invade this place. Probably at least 600 ,000 minimum, probably closer to a million realistically to occupy this island of 24 million people. That is a critical piece of that infrastructure.

29:53So the scenario lays out in great detail, step by step, how you could accomplish it. And the key thing that they will have is that is a huge advantage for them is that they can load up this massive invasion fleet. Right. Hundreds of thousands of personnel, logistics, armor, et cetera. They can leave the Chinese ports. They can cross the Taiwan Strait. They can cross the median line. They can get to within 12 nautical mile distance of Taiwan itself, which delineates their internationally recognized borders. Well, internationally recognized by a few countries, but generally speaking, internationally recognized 12 nautical mile boundary.

30:31And Taiwan can't fire first. In fact, we will tell them that you can't fire first on the Chinese because you don't wanna be the one that will quote unquote provoke the war. Just as the Ukrainians couldn't fire on the Russians as they were amassing this massive invasion force on their borders until they cross. This is Israel can't fire on Hezbollah and Iran as they're preparing to fire on them right now. It's, yeah, exactly. That's the dilemma. It seems to me like I would have like lots and lots and lots of hidden mines on that port so that if they were to take it, I would just secretly blow up all their stuff at some point while they're trying to come in and destroy the whole thing.

31:02But I guess that's a question if they're going to do that or not. But that's really hard, right? Because that port is essential to the Taiwanese economy. So if this is an exercise and if they're not invading, right, you're going to mine your own port and you're going to shut down your economy. It's actually taken and being used against you. And then you'd have to be able to trigger them. This is a dilemma, right? And this is what Zelensky had as a dilemma for him is like he didn't want to shut down the economy in the lead up to the invasion and let people leave and so forth because that plays into the Russia's hands.

31:31So this is the challenge that the Chinese will face, that we will face because we won't want to fire first either and be accused of starting the war. And that gives him an enormous advantage. So later in the book, Dimitri, you make the case that China is actually weaker than we think. Why is that? I think it's quite obvious. First of all, we've made them 10 feet tall in our minds for the last 20, 30 years because obviously they've had this huge economic growth. They have the world's biggest population, at least until recently. But the reality is they're not 10 feet tall. They're not three feet tall either, but they have enormous problems.

32:05First of all, their population is in a demographics collapse. They're already losing at least a million people a year, and that's only going to accelerate throughout the century. So 1.4 billion people today. Conservatively speaking, people are projecting that by the end of the century, they'll have 550 million, right? Which is just a striking population collapse that we have never seen in history. It's a big collapse, but there's several hundred million today that are like very poor, that are brought up without nutrition. They're not contributing to their economy. Whereas by later on, these will all be probably modern, educated people.

32:36So it's not as big of a collapse when you think of that, right? Well, no, because most of them, by the way, will be older. and your ability to support the younger population, the worker population to support the massively older population is going to be a huge challenge, not to mention the healthcare costs are going to go through the roof, right? That's fair. The economy is not yet feeling this population decline, which is very, very deflationary. And you'll probably start feeling it next decade because they still have this very poor population that is moving into the cities, right? That right now is doing agriculture, but as they move into the cities, work in the factories, they'll be more productive.

33:15So they'll get that benefit. But basically in the 2030s, this is going to come to effectively an end. And that's when you're going to start to see the decline in the population really impacting your productivity, impacting your ability to consume goods, manufacture goods. If they know this, do they think they want to take any kind of aggressive actions before they feel that weakness in the 2030s? Is that why late 2020s is more likely to be like a flashpoint? No, I think it's actually driven by Xi Jinping's personal ego more than anything else. I think like Putin, he wants this accomplished on his own watch.

33:48And right now he's not ready. And we know that he knows that he's not ready because he's given an order, according to the CIA director, to have his military be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. That doesn't mean he will, but the fact that he's given the order to be ready means that he knows that he's not today. The reason I don't think it will happen in 27 is twofold. One, as you well know, Joe, just because you give an order to a government agency, either here in China, to be ready by a certain date doesn't mean it actually will. It might take a few years longer. And two, 27 is a very symbolic date for him, right?

34:21First of all, it's a hundred year anniversary of the creation of the People's Liberation Army. It was created before the state was formed because it's actually not a military of the state. It is the military of the Chinese Communist Party. Yep. Right. And obviously they won the Civil War and in 49 created the state. And it's his reelection year. So he's likely to win another five year term in 2027. And imagine the symbolism of him going up in front of the Chinese Party Congress in October, November of that year and saying, for the first time since the creation of the PLA in the hundred years we've had this military, we can now take Taiwan at a moment of our choosing.

34:57Incredible coup, right? and incredibly beneficial for him politically. But also, 27 is kind of his election year. I mean, there's no elections as we think of it in China, but there is an election within the Chinese Communist Party. And yes, he's filled it with loyalists. He's tampered dissent in there, but it still takes bureaucratic work to make sure that there's no one that's going to challenge him, that everything is going to be tight, completely orchestrated. And that takes a lot of effort. So the last thing you want to do is mount the largest military operation in history while you're going through all of that.

35:30So I think in 28, once he gets past the election, he gets past instituting the five-year plan, bringing in the new team, all the bureaucratic things that happen when you have even a new term, that's when he starts thinking about what he wants to accomplish in the next five years. And as he is thinking towards 2032, when the term runs out, he's going to be 79, right? So he's just seen Biden. and what happens to you when you get old. By the way, the Chinese system, they don't tend to elect their leaders into their 80s. So something that we maybe should have learned from earlier. But it's going to be uncertain both health-wise, politically, whether he's going to be able to get another five-year term.

36:13And if he wants it to be accomplished on his own watch, I think that's going to be the window in his mind, at least, 28 through 32. And beyond that, I don't think he's penciled the date certain in the calendar. It's going to be conditions dependent. and when he thinks he's ready, when he thinks it's the most suitable time. But it could happen, I think, as soon as 2028. And the other thing is that if he waits too long into the 20s, 30s, and 40s, it's going to get much worse because we've finally woken up to the threat, right? For the last 20 years, we were distracted in the Middle East and elsewhere.

36:45But now we know that China is a major threat. It's threatening Taiwan. We're trying to build up. We're behind. It's going to take time. But companies like Andrel and others are coming up with all kinds of technologies. We're trying to increase our capabilities. And if you wait a decade or more, you'll find yourself with a military balance of power that does not favor this invasion. We're sprinting really quickly, Dimitri. We have companies like Sironic just raised at a billion-dollar valuation. And we're going to be putting hundreds next year and then thousands of small weaponized autonomous vessels in the water.

37:16So I think America really is ramping up the next few years, which is why. So this is a race, right? Who's going to get there faster? I'm worried he might have to move sooner even because I think we'll be ready by then. But you also have a chapter about the U.S. titled, We Are Stronger Than We Think. So what are our best advantages over China right now? Like you said, we're waking up, but what do we have right now that's strong? I think we have five key advantages, not just over China, but over anywhere else, right? And I think I have unique expertise in this as an immigrant to this country who's lived in another place and who can tell Americans that the grass is not greener.

37:46Like, you know, obviously I was a young kid when I came over, but my parents and even myself at an age of 13 chose this country, right? Because it is the best place. And I call this the five eyes with an eye, not five eyes as the five intelligence agencies that our allies are called. First one is immigration. And just like I was able to come to this country, some of the best and brightest people have been able to come to this country over the history of this place, including many of, of course, our founding fathers, like Alexander Hamilton, for example, and make this country better, right? People like Fermi that have helped to create the atomic bomb and help us to create deterrence in the Cold War and so many, many others.

38:28And I really love the quote I talk about in the book from Scott Galloway, who says that every single year, there's a draft for human talent around the world. And every year, the US gets the top picks. Now, because we have a messed up immigration system where we don't have a merit based program. We don't necessarily take those topics. And it's sort of based on who is able to jump across the border, which is not obviously both from a security perspective and from the ability to pick the very best is not ideal. But still, our ability to track people into this country is incredibly helpful. Despite ourselves, we're still winning on that side.

39:03We'll have to make it better, but we're still winning. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the first generation of the people that are coming across is not going to be as contributing as we would like them to, but their kids, their grandkids for sure are going to be incredibly powerful assets to this country. And if we didn't have immigration, we would today have the same number of people as we had in 1970s, right? So we ourselves would be in a population decline effectively or stagnation and eventual decline because our birth rates are dropping as there are everywhere else in the world. So this is really critical for us.

39:34Second is innovation. I don't have to tell you the power of innovation. what we can do in the Valley, in a place like Austin, really across the country. And you see this not just in software, but now in defense and so many other areas, obviously leading in AI. It's not an accident that all the major AI models that are any good are built in this country, nowhere else, not in China, not even in France. Mistral is a great company, but they're not ChatGPT, they're not Claude, they're not Gemini. The third one that will be very near and dear to your heart is investment. The access to capital that we have in this country is unbelievable.

40:13We have more than 10 ,000 banks and credit unions, more per capita than anywhere else in the world. Thousands of venture capital firms like yours, private equity, family offices, private credit firms. If you're starting a company, there's no better place on the planet to raise money than here. At CrowdStrike, we raised$1.1 billion throughout the history of the company and through the IPO. Right. Couldn't have done this anywhere else. And you also have the benefit of single market where selling a piece of technology or physical good in Seattle is no different than selling it in Alabama. Right. It is the same process.

40:49That's not true anywhere else. You know, you go to Europe and selling in Germany is very different from selling in Italy or UK. You have language barriers, go to market barriers. And that's why many American companies struggle in Europe, frankly, because they try to think of it as United States of Europe. And it's not. You've got to take it a country-by-country approach. There's literally crazy rules in Switzerland for my wealth management company, and it's totally different to sell and detect there. And yeah, it's a mini-bill. Totally, totally. Yeah, the fourth I is influence. We have enormous influence around the world, whether it's the power of the U.S.

41:20dollar, whether it's U.S. military, our alliance framework, unmatched anywhere in the world, right? And the fifth is really our ideas, our constitution, our government framework, despite the challenges that we have in our political system, the polarization, everything else. I think the fact that we can do dissent and civil disagreement in this country without killing each other, hopefully, and it's not just acceptable, but expected, is what makes this battle of ideas work ultimately and allows us to reinvent ourselves even when we go through really, really tough periods in our country's history, which, you know, we're in a tough period today, no question about it.

41:55But it's not the Vietnam War. It's not the Civil War. It's not even the Revolutionary War where Benjamin Franklin was fighting against his own son that was on the side of the loyalists, right? We've been through much, much worse in this country. And every single time, because of our system, we've been able to reinvent ourselves, come out ahead. And the other systems, the dictatorial systems, in the short term, they have an advantage because you've got one guy that can make all the decisions. You don't have to win over the population. You don't have to win over the opposition. But eventually, even if they somehow get lucky and that person is really, really smart, eventually they die.

42:27They pass it off usually to their kids in a monarchy type system or to someone else that the party picks in a communist style system. And you eventually run out of talent because the person that wins is not the one that has the best ideas, but the one that can manage the bureaucracy the best, like Xi Jinping. And, you know, I think Xi Jinping has been the best thing that's ever happened to America because he has effectively destroyed the Chinese economy. He has clamped down on innovation. Through his diplomatic efforts, through this wolf warrior diplomacy, alienated so many countries around the world.

43:02I joke that if he's not a CIA agent, we should put him on the payroll because, my God, he's been fantastic to wake us up to the threat of China and everyone else. He really has hurt their tech sector and their innovation economy in a way that's a huge advantage to us. So we wish we went over immigration, innovation, investment, influence, and ideas. I want to do a few quick questions about each of these before we finish. On immigration, what should we be doing with the smart Chinese students that come here to study? Obviously, some of them are spies. Obviously, some of them are geniuses. What should we be doing with this?

43:32Well, first of all, we need to, you know, fix our asylum program, like having thousands of people just crossing the border, applying for asylum and not being able to vet them, not being able to figure out who is the best, who do we really want is just crazy, right? We want to pick the best people from China, from Russia, from Iran, from all these different places, because not only does it benefit us, but it weakens them, right? It's a brain drain on them. But you want to be selective. You want to obviously vet them to make sure that they're not tied to the intelligence services. You want to figure out who are the best science PhDs and master's students and engineers that we need to drive the innovation in our economy.

44:10And we want to make sure to do this really from anywhere in the world, right, where you have the best talent. So merit-based immigration program is absolutely key. Yeah, my view is you can't tell for sure if some of them are spies, but bringing them into our innovation economy and just having a bureau that watches some of them, but just letting them be here, to me, is just so much better because it's just such an advantage to have more talent here. And most of them are probably not spies. And even if they are, it's like, what are they going to do? There's already so many people in America reporting back.

44:38That's my high level. Yeah. You know, we're decent at counterintelligence. We can always be better. But at the end of the day, majority of them are just looking for a better life for themselves. for their kids. And we want to make sure that they come here so that they can help grow this country. One other area you noted of great strategic importance is chip manufacturing. You talk about preventing China from achieving chip breakout. Have we done a good job of this? I think we passed a bunch of rules recently to stop them from accessing certain things there. Like, are we doing what we need to be doing?

45:07It's really mixed bag and we're too slow on this. So there are two types of chips, broadly speaking. There are more detailed details behind it, but But basically, you can break them into advanced chips, chips below basically 18 nanometers or so, and what I call foundational chips, everything that's basically above, right? And we focus on curtailing their ability, although not entirely stopping yet, in producing advanced chips because these are the chips you need for AI, for your iPhones, for your laptops, and for some of the advanced targeting and missiles and other weapon systems. Really important work.

45:44We've done it in a very haphazard way. It's been kind of half measure because we said equipment, and by the way, all of the equipment that you need to manufacture these chips, whether it's foundational or advanced, is basically built in three places. It's built in America, it's built in Netherlands, the company SML that many have heard about, and in Japan. And you need all of these companies. A lot of people focus just on SML. You can't build chips just with SML equipment. You need actually in deposition, you need all kinds of capabilities that is manufactured both here and in Japan as well. And we basically inserted controls where we said to these companies, if your equipment is only used, and that's the key thing, only used to manufacture chips 18 nanometers and below, you can no longer sell it to China.

46:26You can no longer maintain it, which is another key component. Even if they bought it, maintaining it is really critical because there's constant updates and so forth that happens there. But we said, but if there's dual use equipment, one that can be used to produce 22 nanometer chip, and you can also use it to produce five nanometer chip, that's fine, which is just absolutely insane. That's crazy. So then they all start doing dual use and then they all give it to China. And this is what's happening is that the Chinese have been stockpiling all the equipment that they can buy for the last three years.

46:55And there's been the scandal, if you pay close attention to this, that China was able to, and particularly Huawei, was able to manufacture a seven nanometer chip. And everyone's shocked and saying, oh my God, our export controls aren't working. They're able to do this. Well, how did they do this? They didn't use the EUV extreme ultraviolet equipment from ASML to make it because that's equipment that's only used to manufacture chips below basically 7 nanometers. But they used the previous generation called DUV, deep ultraviolet, also manufactured by ASML, that you can use to manufacture 22 nanometer chips.

47:31But also, and we knew this, can be used to manufacture 7 nanometers because guess what? TSMC in Taiwan in 2019 showed a process that could manufacture a 7 nanometer chip without DUV equipment. So we knew in 2019 it was possible. So why did you think that in 2023 the Chinese would not be able to figure it out? Of course they did. And by the way, most people believe in the sector that 5 nanometer chips would be possible without equipment as well. So we're not actually constraining them on advanced as much as we need to. It's insane. And it's a huge problem. But on the foundational chips, it's even worse because the Chinese have basically said, okay, on advanced, we won't be able to manufacture as much as we need to.

48:10That's a huge problem. We'll try to solve it down the road. But we're going to corner the vast majority of the chips that are not advanced because everything around us, every piece of electronic that we have contains advanced chips. Even those AI servers and data centers that have the NVIDIA GPUs in them, guess what? They need power and they need networking, they need screen, keyboard, etc. All the chips that are driving all of this are not advanced chips. They're foundational chips. Even if you look at your iPhone, there's about 150, 160 chips in that iPhone. Only three of them are advanced. Your processor, your memory, and the baseband from Qualcomm that talks to the cell tower.

48:46Everything else, GPS, screen, power management, battery, accelerometer, so forth, all of that is foundational chips. And China, as we speak, is trying to corner that market with equipment. We're selling them and allowing our companies to sell to them. And they're subsidizing it to drive everyone else out of business to the point where TSMC now, that manufactures both advanced and foundational chips, is considering getting out of the foundational chips business entirely. because the U.S. government is creating this nice monopoly for them in advance, which is more lucrative from a margin perspective.

49:18And foundational chips are going to be competing with subsidized chips from China. That's not a great business, right? So they're going to own the vast majority of the chips. It's a keen, Joe, to basically saying to China, you know what, we're going to stop you from being able to produce advanced materials like carbon fiber that you can use and manufacture boring dreamliners and all kinds of other things. But you know what? we'll let you quarter the entire world market on steel aluminum. How would that sound? Because you can't build anything without steel aluminum. Even the Boeing Dreamliner, 20 to 30 % of it is steel aluminum, right?

49:51And that is the foundational chips that we're letting China dominate. Seems like we need to be writing some better policy here. I hope you're talking to people in DC about this, Demetrius. I am, I am. This has been driving me nuts that we need to make sure our policies are right in the book. needs to make sure that China cannot produce any chips at any node level. And as long as they can't produce chips, they'll be dependent on us. They'll be dependent on Taiwan. And this is a deterrent factor because if they go to war, they'll know that we'll be able to strangle their economy with a chips moratorium, not to mention other things.

50:21And by the way, they need those chips to produce weapons as well. So their ability to wage war is going to be severely diminished. Thank you for being in DC fighting these battles. These are obviously really important. You know, just to end on optimism here, a couple of things. You're immersed in the world of technology and policy. What are some of the most exciting breakthroughs that could give the U.S. advantages over China for decades to come? Or what gives you the most hope right now for the future? Well, so I talk about the key to winning this Cold War is really winning the technological race first and foremost.

50:50Yes, you need to deter the invasion of Taiwan, make sure they never take it for just strategic reasons. But in the broader sense, it is really making sure that our economy wins over China's, right? And we're right now 25 % larger. There's a slowing down. If the trends continue, they'll never catch up with us. But if they manage to win the race in those four critical technologies, they might be able to. And those four critical technologies are AI and autonomy. I don't have to tell you about the importance of that. Second one that's closely related is biotech and synthetic biology. And not just in the area of medical sciences that people think about, but in the area of bioenergetics, by manufacturing, be able to produce new materials, new energy sources in the lab.

51:29I think a lot of that innovation will be driven by AI, and it's very, very exciting. Third one is space. You know this area as well. Places like SpaceX and others that have revolutionized Spacelift, democratized the cost of Spacelift, and the creation of these new modular satellites that you can put in low-Earth orbit at a small price is helping us so much in resiliency, in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and communication, and navigation. really game changer, not just in our military, but I think in a commercial sphere as well. And the fourth one is green energy. As the economies are transitioning to EVs, to batteries, wind, solar, nuclear, we need to make sure that we're dominating in that energy sector as well as we have.

52:14The nuclear one's important to me. I think China's doing really well there and we've been a little slow, but overall, we'll see. Well, so on those three, we're winning, on those four technologies, we're winning the first three, we're losing badly in energy across the board, right? They're dominating batteries. They're now dominating AVs. They're dominating wind and solar and nuclear. And we're far behind. We don't need to be. They're in part ahead because they've stolen so much IP. They've subsidized so much of their industry. They're undercutting us in price. And we need to correct for that imbalance with trade tariffs on Chinese goods to allow our industries to compete.

52:46I've talked to so many startups. I know you guys at AVC have as well in a lot of these areas, in batteries and nuclear, et cetera. They have incredible innovation, much better than what exists in China, but they can't compete against something that's massively subsidized by their government. So you need to sanction those companies in China that have benefited from stolen IP, use trade barriers to prevent them from dumping their products on our economies, and allowing our own innovation to come forward and prosper. I love it. Well, it's true, we're working on all four of these areas. You probably saw Resilience Bio, the biggest new advanced bio manufacturer pushing here, places in the US and allies.

53:21obviously Elon, thanks to him, we're in space. Otherwise, I don't think we would be. And yeah, the nuclear thing's tough. But I think our government's coming around finally on both parties. So it does sound like we're optimistic on this. Final question, what should our smartest young entrepreneurs and policymakers be focusing on? What are people not paying enough attention to in order to help us with these fights? Well, one thing that I think is an advantage to us is that we don't have a top-down state-controlled economy. So ultimately, I think our entrepreneurs should not be listening to what the U.S.

53:51government wants. They should be listening to the market and to their customers. And that's how you ultimately build the best solutions and make sure you don't have stagnation or waste in our economy. So be cognizant, you know, who you're selling to and what they really want. And also don't forget to engage in D.C. I know that D.C. is kind of a dirty word for many in the valley and elsewhere. But the reality is that geopolitics is everywhere. You may not care about geopolitics, but geopolitics certainly cares about you. and whether you're in areas where you're competing against China or whether Chinese are trying to steal your intellectual property, you probably want to figure out how the U.S.

54:26government could help you in trade barriers and sanctions and law enforcement support to prevent this unfair competition that Chinese are engaged in. Well, that's wise advice, Dimitri. Thanks for taking the time to join us. Thanks so much for having me.