The smartest thing Bill Gates has ever said

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

I’ve a new level of respect for Bill Gates after reading this:

You’ve just come back from China, which many people argue is beating us at energy innovation. Do you agree?
In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science — really good science, the semiconductor came out of it. And in the 1980s, we were driven by state-sanctioned racism — the idea that Japan was going to take over everything. But look at consumer electronics today — it’s Xbox, iPhone. Sometimes you overestimate your rival, and that can actually help.

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game. If tomorrow some other country invented cheap energy with no CO2 output, would that be a bad day or a good day? For anybody who’s reasonable, that would be, like, the best day ever. If all you care about is America’s relative position, every day since the end of World War II has really been bad for you. So when somebody says to me, “Oh, the Chinese are helping to lower the cost of it, or creating something that emits less CO2,” I say, “Great.” The Chinese are also working on new drugs. When your children get sick, they might be able to take those drugs.