There is so much extraordinary opportunity if you're curious, if you're interested.

As countries appear and disappear, then I began to ask, what makes countries successful? And it turns out, after a long slog through geographies and ethnicities and all kinds of variables, it's the ability to adapt and adopt, what Darwin talked about.

The thing that's really important to understand is, the last thing an empire traditionally does is drive itself into bankruptcy. You've seen that with the great empires.

China has, all of a sudden, found a way of putting the best of the best to work to build an economy that is growing at 10% to 12% per year, and now India is following. And those changes and how quickly they've come out of this mess, how little debt they have, is really important.

I've always been interested in why countries appear and disappear. And the curious thing is how often it happens.

When I grew up, I simply didn't have mentors that said, "Science is important. Science helps you build a country. Science makes a country powerful." And that's such a simple thought, but when you think about what's powered Taiwan and Korea and Silicon Valley and Cambridge.

The difference between people who can read and write and those who can't is just absolutely astronomical.