Balaji Srinivasan: belief

Transcript context

…Right now, are you more bullish on large political units or small political units? Small countries in general, with one major exception, which is China. I think in general, the countries that are going to win the future will be Estonia, Singapore, Israel — very software-savvy small countries where their leaders are basically almost like software CEOs. What I mean by that is, for example, Estonia’s president, Toomas Ilves, literally a computer scientist. Lee Hsien Loong, who is Lee Kuan Yew’s son, was the wrangler at Cambridge, very smart guy. Netanyahu is an MIT graduate. Those are three examples of folks who are pretty software savvy as leaders of their country. China’s also, as a large country, extremely software savvy. The Great Firewall is an instrument of policy. That’s something that they actually think about as a first-class thing. Even Putin actually has made recent comments about the blockchain, showing it’s on his radar. He’s maybe U-turning Russia to make that a national priority for them. I’d say, in general, I’m more bullish on small countries. There may be a few large ones that are software savvy enough to compete. When it comes to cybersecurity, quite arguably the form of warfare of the future or even the present, is it the small or large countries that have the comparative advantage in either attack or defense?…

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