Simon did not attend the signing ceremony for Westeros' investment in Gilead, but was in San Francisco that day and stayed for three consecutive days.
The schedule is full.
The most important thing is Gilead’s follow-up arrangements.
Officially becoming the largest shareholder of this company, the first thing Simon pushed for was to finalize the appointment of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He only made some adjustments after learning more about the company. Sfeld's role was changed from CEO as originally envisioned to chairman of Gilead. In addition, John Martin, chief scientist in charge of product research and development, took over as CEO.
Prior to this, Gilead's chairman and CEO positions were held by company founder Michael Odan. This time, he has retreated directly behind the scenes.
This does not mean that Michael Odan is marginalized.
In fact, as he gained a deeper understanding of Gilead during this period, Simon gradually discovered that Michael Odan was the real soul of Gilead. Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld had provided the necessary information for the rise of Gilead in history. Government connections are indispensable, but it was Michael Odan who successfully used these resources to bring Gilead to the top.
It's like Warren Buffett's wealthy background is well known.
His father was once a member of Congress, and his grandfather also left a large legacy to the Buffett family. His contacts from childhood to adulthood were either high-level government officials or corporate executives. Any neighbor, Donald Keogh, could later become the president of Coca-Cola. And was largely responsible for one of Warren Buffett's most successful investments.
Many people believe that Buffett's success comes from this.
This ignores one thing.
There are actually many people with similar backgrounds to Buffett, but only Warren Buffett has become a much-anticipated investment tycoon and super rich man.
That's the difference.
The 37-year-old Michael Odan holds two degrees: a doctor of medicine from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard University. First of all, he is a very outstanding person. Being able to recruit big names such as the former US Secretary of Defense to serve as board directors to protect this small company when he founded Gilead eight years ago at the age of 29 is enough to prove that Michael Odan’s family background is no better than Warren Buffett How much difference.
In the past eight years, Michael Odan was able to ensure that Gilead did almost nothing when the company did not go bankrupt due to continuous losses, and successfully completed an IPO, even if there were some less-than-glamorous operations. There is no doubt about the ability of the middle-aged man.
The most important point is that during the communication process between Simon and Michael Odan, he discovered that the other party’s description of Gilead’s future development ideas was exactly the same as the development trajectory of the company in Simon’s memory.
Not only that, he is also a very generous person. Faced with Simon's suggestion to give up Rumsfeld's position, Odan not only agreed, but even completely retreated behind the scenes and gave up the CEO position to John, the company's outstanding chief scientist. Martin, this made Simon take a higher look.
Letting go is never easy.
Michael Odan's concession can release a series of benefits to the market.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld serves as chairman, which allows people to see Gilead's connections at the government level. Everyone knows that this is enough to ensure that the new drug Gilead is promoting is successfully approved by the FDA, even if it is directly entered. The U.S. health care system is not a problem.
I have to say something here.
Ordinary people always wish that all high-priced special drugs should be included in medical insurance so that they can afford them if they get sick. They also think that including these drugs in the medical insurance system is a sign that the authorities attach great importance to medical welfare.
But what is the truth
Just like the Gilead hepatitis C series drugs in Simon's memory, a course of treatment costs US$80,000. After being included in US medical insurance, ordinary Americans can indeed pay for it as long as they have medical insurance. However, people may have overlooked one thing. After all, this money comes from the sheep. This is an important reason for the unusually high medical costs in the United States.
Therefore, it does not mean that the government attaches great importance to medical welfare by including high-priced drugs in the medical insurance system, nor does it mean that the government is ignoring human suffering by refusing to introduce some drugs into the medical insurance system.
In many cases, the opposite may be true.
Back to the topic, Rumsfeld's appointment as chairman can ensure Gilead's connections with the authorities. Giving up the CEO position to the company's chief scientist is enough to show that Gilead attaches great importance to product research and development.
These two personnel changes, coupled with Gilead's upcoming new drugs, are enough to change the market's attitude towards the company.
On the other hand, becoming a member of the Westeros system completely opens up Gilead's situation.
Next, Gilead can implement its original development path in time and space, and form its own relatively monopolized product portfolio focusing on immunodeficiency and anti-viral fields through continuous acquisitions of start-up pharmaceutical companies of the same type, and then penetrate the U.S. medical insurance system through its connections with the authorities. Expand market share to a certain extent and ultimately realize Gilead’s take-off.
These operations require Michael Odan to be in charge.
Although he has resigned as chairman and CEO of Gilead, as the founder, Michael Odan still controls 12.7% of Gilead's shares. Coupled with Simon's absolute support, the middle-aged man can completely promote Geely according to his own ideas. The future of virtue.
After settling Gilead and handling some affairs for several companies in Silicon Valley, Simon was invited to visit the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, east of the Bay Area, on Friday.
This federal national laboratory was co-founded by Nobel Prize winner Ernest Lawrence in the early 20th century and Edward Teller, the father of the American hydrogen bomb. It is affiliated with the National Nuclear Security Administration under the federal Department of Energy, and It is run by the University of California and is mainly engaged in research and development in many cutting-edge scientific and technological fields such as chemical elements, supercomputers, and nuclear weapons.
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory took the initiative to invite Simon this time, mainly because it heard that the young super-wealth tycoon was interested in controllable nuclear fusion, and it was also rumored that it would provide funding for the ITER project. It just so happened that another controllable nuclear fusion research project being promoted by the laboratory had been stranded due to the continuous budget cuts by the federal government in recent years, so it took the initiative to come to the door.
The name of the project is called 'National Ignition Facility'.
This is a name specially given by the laboratory two years ago in order to apply for federal budget support. Simply put, it uses multiple beams of high-energy lasers to superimpose and bombard fusion raw materials to stimulate nuclear fusion reactions. Different from tokamak and stellarator that use the principle of magnetic confinement, laser ignition technology is called inertial confinement nuclear fusion because it generates inertial force squeeze through laser bombardment to achieve the high temperature environment required for nuclear fusion.
In fact, whether it is tokamak, stellarator or laser ignition, they are all concepts that have been proposed in the 1950s and 1960s.
After starting to pay attention to this field last year, Simon also read a lot of information carefully in private, and has a considerable understanding of the current mainstream controllable nuclear fusion research directions.
Compared with tokamak and stellarator that use magnetic confinement principle, the biggest advantage of laser ignition is that it can be miniaturized. Some experts in related fields believe that if nuclear fusion-driven spacecraft is to be developed in the future, laser ignition will be the top priority, and tokamak and stellarator, which must be huge, are more suitable for building nuclear power plants or large aircraft carriers.
Not only that, laser ignition technology is also controversial.
Once this technology matures, it can also be used to make nuclear weapons. Unlike the current hydrogen bombs that require an atomic bomb to trigger and cause a large amount of radiation residue, the hydrogen bomb using laser ignition technology will not produce any radiation residue, is clean, clean, and can even be used as a standing weapon.
A hydrogen bomb that could kill millions of people instantly.
Clean, clean.
It sounds ironic, but because of this characteristic, laser-ignited hydrogen bombs can bypass the provisions of the United Nations Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear weapons because they produce severe radioactive residues. It has to be said that human beings are really trying every possible means to take advantage of loopholes to destroy themselves.
Simon is really interested in promoting the development of controllable nuclear fusion technology.
However, after the on-site visit, I gave up any idea of support.
Mainly I want to live a few more years.
Moreover, since having these ideas last year, Simon has actually been learning to think about and even recall information about aerospace, nuclear energy and other fields in his memory.
The most profound one is a comparison in the aerospace field.
In my memory, I often see people complaining about the degradation of human space technology, and even Simon himself thought so at one time.
Humans were able to land on the moon in the 1960s. However, in the 21st century, this matter has become more and more difficult, and conspiracy theories have even arisen that the entire moon landing plan was a hoax.
Combining various pieces of information, Simon discovered the joints.
The moon landing plan of that year coincided with the most intense period of the struggle for hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both sides devoted their entire country's strength, regardless of cost.
The most typical one is the Saturn 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle used by the United States to land on the moon.
This heavy-lift launch vehicle is often considered by latecomers to be a sign of the degradation of human aerospace technology.
The Saturn 5 back then was able to achieve a low-Earth orbit payload of up to 140 tons. However, decades later, no rocket has a low-Earth orbit carrying capacity of more than 100 tons, not even the highly regarded SpaceX Heavy Hunter. The Eagle rocket has a maximum payload of only 64 tons in low-Earth orbit.
If you only look at this comparative number, it is absolutely a complete degradation.
However, most people actually ignore one of the most important factors: cost!
The manufacturing cost of the Saturn 5 at that time reached 500 million U.S. dollars each, while the most advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise in the United States at that time cost only 450 million U.S. dollars. After the new century, the cost of building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the United States has soared to 10 billion U.S. dollars. According to this standard, the manufacturing cost of the Saturn 5 that year was basically in the tens of billions of U.S. dollars.
So, how much does SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy cost
$60 million!
140 tons vs. 64 tons.
$10 billion versus $60 million.
Degenerate
nonexistent.
The fundamental reason is that in this era it is difficult for all countries in the world to do one thing with all their national strength.
The real power of the country.
However, the biggest inspiration for Simon from this incident is actually another aspect. Perhaps, if the Saturn 5 was built by a company like SpaceX instead of being led by the government, and then used as fat by major suppliers, maybe it would also There is no need for US$450 million, maybe US$45 million at the time would be enough.
That's right.
Any country, any system, and government leadership will inevitably suffer from serious waste.
This is definitely not just aerospace.
The same is true for research on controllable nuclear fusion.
Projects such as ITER and the National Ignition Facility, which have been shelved in recent years due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, require billions of dollars of investment.
Do you really need so much money
The key to why SpaceX can achieve such low prices lies in founder Elon Musk’s frantic cost reduction.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin and even state-owned aerospace companies in other countries rest on the hotbed of government funding and do not want to make progress. They carry out global procurement with solutions that are still stuck at the technical level of the 1950s and 1960s, without considering cost-effectiveness at all, and often use their own We are proud of our global sourcing strategy.
SpaceX, however, produces most of its parts in-house. Moreover, SpaceX can make millions of dollars worth of parts used by giants such as Boeing for tens or even thousands of dollars. This directly caused the problem even if the authorities put Boeing in Los Angeles. Even if Ma Dang is his own son, there is no way he can compete with SpaceX.
The United States later restarted the moon landing program and provided tens of billions of dollars in funding for Boeing Lockheed Martin regardless of the cost. If you want NASA's technical reserves, you can. The Apollo program data will be moved directly. If you want to rebuild the launch pad, no problem. Just spend a billion and achieve nothing.
Burning a large amount of money ultimately just proved that these established giants had completely lost the ability to execute the moon landing plan in their comfort. In the end, they found that they could only rely on SpaceX to achieve the moon landing again.
What Simon saw when he visited the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory on Friday was exactly what he remembered.
The Livermore Laboratory, which has more than 2,000 employees with only doctorate degrees, is basically like a nursing home. In addition, the U.S. government has significantly reduced the budget of relevant departments in recent years, and the laboratory as a whole has an atmosphere of muddling through without seeking advancement. breath.
Totally just a job.
The planned 'National Ignition Facility' is expected to cost US$3 billion and the construction period will be as long as 10 years. It is similar to the large-scale tokamak device planned by ITER.
According to the person in charge, it is also a global procurement strategy.
Is such a long construction period and such an expensive cost really necessary
A large number of engineers with the most advanced degrees but have lost their ambition work from nine to five every day. They discuss a component for three days, and if it feels inappropriate, they postpone it for another three days. They drink coffee and tighten screws leisurely, and of course they have to do it halfway. Let’s take another break. Such a pace will of course require US$3 billion, and of course it will take 10 years.
Think again about the memory of burning a large amount of government funding only to prove that it has lost Boeing Lockheed to carry out the US moon landing program.
That's probably it.
This is definitely not what Simon wants.
Initially, he wanted to recruit a group of people from these top research institutions, but Simon also gave up the idea.
What Simon needs is an enterprising team with the spirit of innovation and exploration in Silicon Valley like SpaceX in his memory, not a group of scientific research bugs who have lost their energy in a long-term comfortable environment.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of such talents within the Westeros system.
Simon also believes that there are still some motivated people in those laboratories who have not lost their enthusiasm.
The Solvay plan to cultivate world-changing geniuses is unlikely to bear fruit in a short period of time, but Simon does not intend to wait until many years later. Before returning to Los Angeles, Simon directly asked people to start looking for talents interested in promoting the development of nuclear energy in human spaceflight. There is also a small goal, to find Elon Musk, who should have been in Silicon Valley at this time.
Although there is no shortage of similar talents on hand, since Elon Musk has proven that he can succeed in the original space and time, this can be regarded as a shortcut.
Simon plans to put the other party in charge of the new SpaceX, which was quietly registered last year.
As for the field of nuclear energy, which focuses on controllable nuclear fusion, of course it cannot be placed on one person. However, Simon also needs people with the same characteristics.