Hollywood Hunter

Simon did not participate in the signing ceremony of Westeros' shareholding in Gilead, but it was in San Francisco that day.

And stay for three consecutive days.

The schedule is full.

Naturally, the most important thing is about Gilead Science Company.

Formally becoming the company's largest shareholder, the first thing Simon promoted was to finalize the position of former Federal Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but made some adjustments after a more detailed understanding of the company, Ram Sfield’s position changed from the originally envisioned CEO to Chairman Gilead.

At the same time, John Martin, the chief scientist in charge of product development, took over as CEO.

Prior to this, Gilead's chairman and CEO positions were all held by the company's founder Michael Odan, and this time it was directly backstage.

However, this does not mean that Michael Ordan is marginalized.

In fact, with 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 support for Gilead’s rise in history. Indispensable government contacts, but Michael Odan successfully used these resources to bring Gilead to the top.

It’s like Warren Buffett’s background is well known.

His father used to be a member of Congress, and his grandfather also left an enormous legacy for the Buffett family. From small to large, the contacts are either high-level government or business executives. Any neighbor, Donald Keo, can later become the president of Coca-Cola. And largely contributed to Warren Buffett's most successful investment.

Many people think that Buffett's success is because of this.

But ignored one thing.

There are actually many people with similar backgrounds to Buffett, but only Warren Buffett has become a highly regarded investment tycoon.

This is the difference.

The 37-year-old Michael Ordan holds two doctorate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and MBA from Harvard University. This is first and foremost a very outstanding person.It was enough to prove that Michael Odan’s family background is no different than Warren Buffett when he was able to bring in former US Secretary of Defense and other big coffees as board directors when he founded Gilead eight years ago. How much worse.

In the past eight years, Michael Odan was able to ensure that the company did not fail due to continuous losses, and successfully completed the IPO, even if there were some other less visible operations, The ability of this middle-aged man is beyond doubt.

The most important point is that during the communication between Simon and Audan, the middle-aged man's portrayal of Gilead's future development ideas is exactly the same as the company's development trajectory in Simon's memory.Not only that, this is a very atmospheric person. In the face of Simon’s suggestion to abdicate Rumsfeld, Odan not only agreed, but even completely retired behind the scenes, giving the CEO position to the company’s chief scientist John. Martin, this gives Simon a closer look.

It is never easy to let go.

This concession by Michael O'Dan can release a series of positives to the market.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld served as chairman, which can show Gilead’s government contacts. Everyone knows that this is enough to ensure that the new drug that Gilead is promoting is successfully approved or even directly entered. American medical insurance system.

I have to say a little here.

Ordinary people always want all special-effect medicines to be included in the medical insurance, so that they can be used once they are sick, and believe that the willingness to include these drugs in the medical insurance system is the performance of the authorities to pay attention to medical benefits.

But what is the truth?

Just like the Gilead hepatitis C drugs in Simon’s memory, a US$80,000 course of treatment, ordinary Americans can indeed pay after they are included in the US medical insurance. However, people may ignore this point. After all, the money is from the sheep. The United States The medical expenses are abnormally high,

Therefore, it is not that the authorities include high-priced medicines in medical insurance or attach importance to medical welfare, nor that the government refuses to introduce some medicines into the medical insurance system to ignore human suffering.

Many times, the facts may be just the opposite.

Going back to the topic, Rumsfeld's chairmanship can ensure Gilead's authority network and give up the position of CEO to the company's chief scientist, which is enough to show Gilead's emphasis on product development.

These two personnel changes, coupled with Gilead's upcoming new drugs, are enough to change the market's attitude towards this company.

On the other hand, as a member of the Westeros system, Gilead's situation is tantamount to a complete opening.Next, Gilead can implement the previous development route, through continuous mergers and acquisitions of the same type of start-up pharmaceutical companies, to form its own monopoly product portfolio focusing on immunodeficiency and antiviral fields, and then penetrate the US medical insurance system through the authority network, which is enough to achieve Geely. The takeoff of Germany.

Operations in this area require Michael Ordan to continue trading.

Although he resigned from the position of chairman and CEO of Gilead, as the founder, Audan still holds 12.7% of Gilead’s shares, coupled with Simon’s absolute support, middle-aged people can completely promote Gilead’s future.

After finishing his work on Gilead, he also handled the affairs of several companies in Silicon Valley. On Friday, Simon was invited to visit the Lawrence-Livermore National Experiment in Livermore, east of the San Francisco Bay Area. room.

This U.S. national laboratory was co-founded by Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize winner in the early twentieth century, and Edward Taylor, the father of the U.S. hydrogen bomb, and is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration under the Federal Department of Energy, and Operated by the University of California, it is mainly engaged in the research and development of chemical elements, supercomputers, nuclear weapons and other cutting-edge technology fields.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories sent an invitation to Simon this time, mainly because it was heard that the young super wealth tycoon was interested in controlled nuclear fusion, and it was once rumored to provide funding for the ITER project.As it happens, another controllable nuclear fusion project being promoted by the laboratory was stranded because the federal government continued to cut research and development budgets, so it took the initiative to find the door.

The name of the project is called'National Ignition Device'.

This is a name that the laboratory intentionally named two years ago to apply for federal government budget support. In short, it is the occurrence of high-temperature excited nuclear fusion by multi-beam high-energy laser bombardment of fusion fuel.Unlike devices such as tokamak and stellarators that use the principle of magnetic confinement, laser ignition technology can be called inertial confinement nuclear fusion based on the principle difference.

In fact, whether it is tokamak, star simulator or laser ignition, are concepts that have been put forward in the 1950s and 1960s.

After starting to pay attention to this field last year, Simon has also read a lot of relevant information in private, and has a considerable understanding of the major mainstream research directions of nuclear fusion at this stage.

Compared with the tokamak and the stellarator using the principle of magnetic confinement, the biggest advantage of laser ignition is that it can be miniaturized.Some experts in related fields believe that if a nuclear fusion-driven spacecraft is to be developed in the future, laser ignition will be the most preferred option, and the huge tokamak and stellarator must be used only for the construction of nuclear power plants or large aircraft carriers.

Not only that, laser ignition technology has a controversial point.

Once this technology is mature, it can also be used to manufacture nuclear weapons.Unlike the list that requires atomic bomb triggering at this stage to cause strong radiation residues, hydrogen bombs using laser ignition technology will not produce radiation residues, and are clean, clean, and can even be used as standing weapons.

A hydrogen bomb that can kill millions of people in an instant.

Clean, clean.

It sounds ironic, but because of this feature, it can bypass the restrictions of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, because nuclear weapons that produce severe radiation residues will be banned by the treaty.It has to be said that human beings are really trying to find ways to self-destruct.

Simon is really interested in promoting the development of related technologies.

However, after the field visit, the idea of ​​any support was dispelled directly.

Mainly want to live a few more years.

Moreover, since these ideas were produced last year, Simon has been learning about thinking and even information about aerospace nuclear energy in conference memory.

The most profound is still a comparison in the field of aerospace.

I can often see people complaining about the degradation of human space technology, even Simon himself.

Humans were able to land on the moon in the 1960s. As a result, in the 21st century, this matter became more and more difficult, and even produced conspiracy theories that the entire lunar landing plan was a scam.

Combining all kinds of information, Simon discovered the joints.

The plan to land on the moon that year coincided with the most intense period of US-Soviet hegemony. Both sides spared no effort. It can be said that they have exhausted the strength of the entire country, excluding costs.

The most typical is the Saturn 5 heavy launch vehicle used by the United States to land on the moon.

This is often regarded by latecomers as a standard for the degradation of human space technology.

Saturn V was able to achieve a spaceflight carrying capacity of 150 tons. However, in a few decades, no rocket carrying capacity can exceed 100 tons. Even the highly respected SpaceX heavy falcon rocket has only carrying capacity. 64 tons.

If you only look at this comparative figure, it is absolutely degraded.

However, most people actually ignore one of the most important factors: cost!

The manufacturing cost of Saturn 5 at the time was $500 million each, while the cost of the most advanced enterprise nuclear power carrier in the United States at that time was only $450 million.After the new century, the cost of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the United States has skyrocketed to $10 billion. According to this standard, the cost of each Saturn 5 rocket is basically the same.

So, how much does SpaceX's heavy falcon cost?

60 million dollars!

150 tons versus 64 tons.

$10 billion vs. $60 million.

Degradation?

joke.

The fundamental reason is that in this era, it is difficult for all countries in the world to do one thing with the power of the country.

The real power of national devotion.

However, the biggest inspiration for Simon from this incident is actually another aspect. Perhaps, if Saturn 5 was done by a company like SpaceX, rather than government-led, it might not need $450 million, maybe 45 million at the time. US dollars are enough.

That's right.

Any country, any system, and government-led will inevitably lead to serious waste.

This is definitely not just aerospace.

The same may be true of research on controlled nuclear fusion.

Projects such as the ITER and the National Ignition Unit, which have been shelved in recent years because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, are all billions of dollars in investment. Is it really necessary to have so much money?

Why SpaceX can achieve such a low price, and even achieve rocket recovery, the key lies in founder Elon Musk frantically compress costs.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin and even state-owned aerospace companies in other countries are lying on the hotbed of government funding and are not enterprising. They carry out global procurement with solutions that still stay at the technical level of the 1950s and 60s. Is proud of its global sourcing strategy, but SpaceX realizes that most of its parts are self-produced. Moreover, Boeing and other giants use millions of dollars in parts. SpaceX can even make them themselves with tens of thousands or thousands of dollars, which directly causes Even if the authorities hurt Boeing Loma as a son, they could not compete with SpaceX.

Later, the United States restarted the lunar landing program and provided Boeing Loma with tens of billions of dollars in all aspects of the cost. If you want NASA's technical reserves, you can directly remove the Apollo plan information that year. If you want to rebuild the launch pad, you can directly smash it. A billion, but the result was nothing, burned a lot of money, just proved that these old giants have completely lost the ability to execute the moon landing plan in the comfort, and finally found that only SpaceX equipment has the strength to execute the moon landing plan.

On Friday, Simon captured the emotions that Livermore Lab saw, exactly the same as the information in his memory.

Livermore Laboratories, with more than 2,000 scientists and engineers, is like a nursing home. In addition, the US government has drastically reduced the budgets of these departments in recent years. A breath of life.

It's just a job.

The planned'national ignition device' is expected to cost $3 billion, and the construction cycle will take up to 10 years, similar to the large tokamak device planned by ITER.

Moreover, according to the introduction of the person in charge, it is also a global procurement strategy.

Is such a long construction period and such expensive construction cost really necessary?

It was still a group of engineers on time every day from 9 to 5 on time, and a part was discussed for three days. If it felt wrong, it was delayed for another three days. Every day, I drank coffee and screwed the screws. Of course, I had to take a rest halfway. Rhythm, of course, needs 3 billion US dollars, and of course it takes 10 years.

Think about it again. The large amount of government funds burned in memory just proves that it has lost the Boeing Loma that implemented the US moon landing plan.

That's probably it.

But this is definitely not what Simon wants.

At first, I wanted to dig out a group of people from these top research institutions, and Simon also dispelled the idea.

What Simon needs is a memory and aggressive team with the spirit of innovation and exploration in Silicon Valley like SpaceX, but not a group of codlings that have lost their spirit in a long-term comfortable environment.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of such people within the Westeros system.

Simon also believes that there are still a lot of aspirants in the laboratory who have not been killed by the sharpness.

In order to cultivate Solvay's plan to change the world's genius, it is impossible to achieve results in a short time, but Simon does not intend to wait until many years later.So, before returning to Los Angeles, Simon directly asked people to be interested in promoting the development of human space and nuclear energy.There is also a small goal to find out Elon Musk, who has been in the Silicon Valley at this time.

Although there is no shortage of similar talents in hand, since Elon Musk has proven to be a success in time, this is also a shortcut.

Simon intends to make the other party responsible for the new SpaceX that has been quietly registered last year.

As far as nuclear energy is concerned, of course, it cannot be put on a person, but Simon also needs people with the same qualities.