Governor Mitch Daniels and Senator Todd Young (R-Ind) discuss current threats to liberty, the state of the American military, the national debt, and the importance of continuing to invest in science and technology. They also consider the complex process of getting legislation passed, the impact of AI on military operations, and they close their discussion with some reasons to be hopeful about America in 2050.
Governor Mitch Daniels and Senator Todd Young (R-Ind) discuss current threats to liberty, the state of the American military, the national debt, and the importance of continuing to invest in science and technology. They also consider the complex process of getting legislation passed, the impact of AI on military operations, and they close their discussion with some reasons to be hopeful about America in 2050.
Intro (00:02):
Welcome to The Future of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund, hosted by Mitch Daniels.
Mitch Daniels (00:17):
Greetings, I’m Mitch Daniels, and on behalf of everyone at the Liberty Fund, welcome to the latest installment of our podcast, The Future of Liberty. We could not have conceived of a more appropriate or informative guest than the one we have today. A leader in both thought and action on behalf of freedom, its defense at home and abroad, he is Senator Todd Young. Senator Young, thank you for making time to join us.
Todd Young (00:43):
Thanks for having me, Mitch.
Mitch Daniels (00:45):
I want to ask about your day job. Congress, some people think, is a less pleasant place to be and a less fulfilling role than it used to be. We have seen people of real talent throw up their hands and leave on both sides of the aisle. You are still there, and we are glad you are, but can we count on you staying? How is it working in Congress these days?
Todd Young (01:08):
Well, I have to tell you, I plan on staying. I actually love the job, I find it stimulating intellectually. I think it's a very important time to serve, and to hopefully instill some measure of trust in our federal government when it's at this low ebb, and I love my colleagues and constituents. So, there are tough days, it's certainly hard to get things done, we hear that consistently from people who leave, and there's a lot of countervailing forces for people to serve these days, but I'm privileged to do it.
Mitch Daniels (01:48):
You're a great counter example to the contention that people can't get anything done, we'll come to that in a few minutes, you have gotten some big things done, even in this environment. But before we move on to some of those, I just want to ask, when you're together with your colleagues in the party caucus or in bipartisan settings, how often does the word liberty, the word freedom, or concerns about its status come up?
Todd Young (02:16):
It comes up periodically, but not enough. I frequently lament that we don't return to first principles enough, which is why the Liberty Fund is so important. Now, you're dedicated to exposing people to the thought behind our first principles. What I think we need to do is return to defining these key terms, these foundational terms. And when you think of liberty, to me, it's about having the freedom, having the ability to go out and pursue whatever ends one pleases, but of course, subject to certain limitations. There's positive and negative dimensions to liberty. I tend to gravitate more towards this negative view of liberty, which is we want to be free from external interference, but like everything, that has to be tempered with reality and real world needs of constituents.
Mitch Daniels (03:19):
Well, reality has begun to make itself plain as it does over and over through human history. America had a, I'll call it a pleasant holiday from worrying about foreign threats, but that's over now. Several are very plain, and so I want to ask you some questions about that. You're as credible on this as anyone we could ever host here, you're a Naval Academy grad, a Marine Corps veteran, and you've worked on these issues now during your federal service. When you array the various threats, and I think threats plural is probably an accurate way to ask it, which do you rank the most serious and the most immediate?
Todd Young (04:07):
Well, there's a structural threat to our liberty right now, and by that I mean, we live by a series of rules, domestically, those rules are enshrined in our laws, our statutes, our court decisions, and the norms that we've established, norms of acceptable behavior. We frown when those are violated. And sometimes we develop rules because those norms are no longer being followed. Yes, they're bodies of law, but also these norms of behavior internationally protect our economic freedom so that we can trade, prevent people from stealing our intellectual property, and ultimately, they prevent bad actors, bad leaders of countries from stealing territory and threatening the freedoms of our friends and ourselves.
(05:05):
And that whole body of rules and norms is being upset by a couple of malevolent countries, but the numbers are growing. China, communist China, of course, Russia, with its invasion of Ukraine, you throw Venezuela, Iran into the mix, and you have what Anne Applebaum, the writer for The Atlantic, has characterized as, "Autocracy incorporated." There's now cooperation among those who really don't share particular beliefs ideologically other than they want to remain in power, and the law of the jungle seems to be overtaking this rules-based order that once existed.
Mitch Daniels (05:53):
The one thing they agree on is they don't care much for us, and our institutions.
Todd Young (05:57):
That's right. They don't care much for us, or the premises on which we developed our institutions, these sort of enlightenment values that so much of the world subscribes to, the free world, so to speak, but even that term is becoming challenged right now.
Mitch Daniels (06:17):
Let me ask you a China specific question, and I will probably have a couple more before we are done. There have been different schools of thought about China. Some believed it would liberalize as it became wealthier. That did not happen.
Todd Young (06:28):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (06:29):
But now it seems there are those who believe they are to be feared and guarded against as a primary threat. Others who think that they have within them the seeds of their own undoing. Containment worked in the case of the Soviet Union, we never, thank goodness, had a shooting war or anything like it with them, is it possible that that works here too, as their internal contradictions, as the Marxists call them, become more and more evident?
Todd Young (07:04):
No, I do not think that is going to work, certainly not as neatly as we tried to execute it during the Cold War. Our economy remains deeply tied to China, and more importantly, the economies of many of our friends and allies are also fairly deeply integrated with China. I have tested the idea that we could have a hard decoupling, as some would call it, from China. I traveled around the Asian Pacific and visited Japan, Taiwan, India, and many other countries. Time and again, I heard, ‘No, we will continue to trade with China and trade extensively into the future.’ If that is the case, and if we insist that American firms leave, then other countries will simply take that market share.
(08:08):
So, to the extent we do decouple, we'll have to do that collectively with our friends and allies, but I think more realistically we need to continue to, on a number of fronts, fight for our basic values and undermine the ability of the Chinese and some other malevolent actors to acquire the technology and other means to challenge our ability to defend our way of life. I'd be happy to unpack that a bit more if you like.
Mitch Daniels (08:40):
People generally agree, I think that we've allowed our national defense apparatus, our resources, to dwindle to the point that they may not be adequate to fend off or deter the various threats that we're facing. Talk about that and the cost in a time of big deficits for addressing it satisfactorily.
Todd Young (09:10):
So, I am among those who think we need to invest more in our military, more in some discreet areas. For example, we need more ships, there's an old adage that quantity has its own quality. So, we need more ships to cover more surface area around the world, if we want to continue to defend sea lines of communication, our trade routes, and ultimately our values. That's one example of an area where we need to invest more. But I'm also of the mind that there are areas where we need to disinvest. Perhaps geographic areas, I think that needs to be fully vetted, I don't believe it has. Technology areas, we need to rethink the nature, I think first and foremost, about our naval warfare. Should we still be investing in aircraft carriers at a time of long range hypersonic weaponry?
(10:12):
So, there are ways we can spend a lot more effectively in addition to spending more. The one department of government that I'm highly apprehensive about cutting is DOD without some real clear sense of why you're cutting it, I don't believe we do that well in Congress because oftentimes there's a certain hero status given to anyone wearing stars on their shoulder, and I find that sometimes healthy in our democracy, but oftentimes it can be very destructive among policymakers.
Mitch Daniels (10:50):
Since you mentioned geographic retrenchment or at least reexamination, you better say where you're thinking, because otherwise our audience may fill in the blank with an inaccurate supposition.
Todd Young (11:05):
I believe in the idea that we need to persuade our allies and partners to invest more in their own military capabilities. I credit President Trump in particular for having catalyzed, however messy the process may have been, more investment by our European partners in particular, but we've also seen similar action from the South Koreans, from the Japanese, and others. So, to the extent we withdraw, others should be filling in certain investment responsibilities, and we're seeing that happen. Not quickly enough, and whomever our next president is working with members of Congress like myself, needs to really emphasize to our friends and partners that we just cannot bear every burden globally anymore. We don't have sufficient resources, and frankly, the American people are exhausted after a couple of decades of war and continued profligacy on a number of levels.
Mitch Daniels (12:07):
One of our most respected retired generals and national security experts, just a few years ago, when asked in Congress, I believe, to define the number one threat he saw to our national security, said, ‘Our national debt.’
Todd Young (12:22):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (12:22):
I think it means that we've put ourselves in a corner where it'd be difficult to make the investments necessary to level up the competition.
Todd Young (12:32):
Yes. This is something you have credibly spoken about for a long period of time and with much authority. I certainly embrace the spirit of everything you have said. We need to get our finances under control, and we need to figure out how to eke out additional growth, which I do not think we discuss frequently enough. When we talk about debt to GDP, the denominator is also something we need to emphasize. If we lose this exorbitant privilege, as the French once characterized it, of having the reserve currency, there will be both geopolitical and economic implications. It will cost us much more to borrow money, and it will make us less resilient, whether in the face of currency crises or international disputes. I do not think most people fully appreciate the benefits we receive from having this currency. It is something we inherited, and we have an obligation to pass it on to our children.
Mitch Daniels (13:49):
Your point about growth is very fundamental, and it highlights another problem some of us see in the accumulation of our debt. We are now paying interest at rates that are closer to historical norms, as opposed to artificially suppressed rates. This is leaning against growth by soaking up so much of the available capital that could otherwise be used to build a new factory or invent a new product.
Todd Young (14:20):
It's absolutely the case, most of this is unseen, we fail to appreciate the potential benefits of things that would otherwise be invested in. Research and development, skills for our workers so they can become more productive and earn a higher wage, but there's also collective losses that we experience at the governmental level, at some point we see a crowding out of collective investments. Sometimes that's in R&D or military, necessary military hardware that we need to invest in. Those decisions, as they become harder, there are some things left on the cutting room floor that are really necessary to defend our way of life.
Mitch Daniels (15:14):
You've been a leader, you just mentioned R&D, the determinative role of science in national success these days, and you've done something about it. Here's an example that Congress can act, at least when the right people take leadership. So, that legislation, the world knows as the CHIPS Act, was as much your conception and achievement as anybody's. I know you had partners, of course, but I'd like you to talk about this. First of all, from the standpoint of what you think it can accomplish in making us, if not independent, less dependent on fragile sources, and why semiconductors are so important in the first place.
Todd Young (16:03):
Sure. There are two pieces to the CHIPS and Science Act, if I may oversimplify. The science piece involves investment in emerging technology. If you look at the benefit to cost ratio of investments in university and Department of Energy lab based research over the years, you can see the returns. You saw this perhaps most closely through your leadership role at Purdue University. Over time, as a proportion of our economy, we have invested less in the physical sciences and in certain areas of applied research. Our own economic history, particularly the space race, shows that we reaped enormous national security benefits from those investments. Economically, even today, we continue to enjoy the fruits of an aerospace industry that would not have been possible without those federal investments. That is the science piece.
(17:07):
The semiconductor piece is more a case of what you see is what you get. We won’t unpack the details, but during the global pandemic we saw auto assembly plants here in the state of Indiana forced to idle multiple times. If you went to Walmart to buy a toaster, you would find empty shelves. Almost everything in a digitally enabled society, which is increasingly what we are moving toward, depends on semiconductors. This is a critical input in what some would call a fourth industrial revolution, the digital revolution we are in. Perhaps most importantly, even our weapons platforms, including radars, jets, and nuclear weapons, rely on semiconductors. We need to be able to trust the fidelity of these semiconductors. Will they work when we need them to work? Do they have the resistance that is needed, and so on?
(18:10):
Moreover, there's a broader term here that is often used, I think, too liberally, it's called economic security. I think there's a very powerful dimension to national security that we're now thinking about, which is the resilience of your economy. The mantra for those of us who believe in the beauty and the elegance of a free market for decades has been, let's allow individual economic actors and businesses to chase where they get the highest return on investment, seeking efficiency, right? Well, when that is done at the expense of the broader resiliency of an economy, it has a negative spill over effect on all kinds of Americans.
(19:00):
The CHIPS Act was designed to give our economy greater resiliency by reshoring much of our semiconductor production here in the United States. The approach we took included some tax incentives and other measures, but it was mostly subsidies for businesses that manufacture semiconductors. The goal, much like a governor would approach it, was to compete with other countries that offer similar subsidies.
Mitch Daniels (19:31):
The approach that was taken is generally described as industrial policy, and it has its fans, and obviously you had to work with many of them in order to make this thing happen at all.
Todd Young (19:40):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (19:41):
But many of those you worked with are eager to, and in fact have, advanced similar approaches in other sectors far removed from semiconductors. In your judgment, was this a unique exception, or was the approach of heavy public investment appropriate despite what the market might be saying?
Todd Young (20:02):
This is a unique approach. I'm going to anticipate the end of that question, with respect. I have leveled criticisms at the extension of this intervention, this adjustment to how we think about markets to other areas in which I regard it as inappropriate. One, for example, would be green energy. If we really want to catalyze a revolution in green energy and drive down the cost and increase the effect of green energy, we invest in where the science portion of CHIPS and Science did, innovation, right? We didn't take that approach for mostly political reasons, I think, or politicized economics.
(20:46):
So, I'm open to other cases where we need to take risks out of our supply chain, and I will accept those just as I did in the semiconductor context. I would criticize many on the right, including some of our most well-read publications for not changing the model as reality suggested they should. But on the left, this gratuitous extension of this exception to all kinds of cases I think is very dangerous, and will increase prices on our economy at a very time we're trying to reduce them.
Mitch Daniels (21:28):
I'm glad you anticipated the question because I anticipated the answer and that's why I asked the question.
Todd Young (21:32):
Thank you.
Mitch Daniels (21:33):
It's an important answer.
Todd Young (21:34):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (21:35):
But let me ask you about one last dimension of that. Even the act you helped bring into being seems to me to have been politicized in a couple of ways as it has been implemented.
Todd Young (21:50):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (21:51):
All sorts of ideological conditions have been placed on the money, that I don't think were part of the statutory design, and some believe it will dilute its effect. I'm curious to know how you react to that, whether you anticipated that, and whether it can be reigned in?
Todd Young (22:19):
I have been following this, as you might expect, very closely. Legislating is not a fire and forget exercise, as we would say in the Marine Corps. In terms of implementation, there have really been three areas, and I will be very quick on this, in which I think there has been some politicization. I actually believe those instances are fairly limited. We have seen the unlocking of about two hundred fifty billion dollars of capital since the passage of the act, with very little of the money having actually flowed. That said, the three areas include environmental permitting. We have not achieved environmental permitting reform in any area of our economy, so I think those critiques are, in the main, unfair. I did negotiate an environmental permitting provision in a bill. It made it out of the United States Senate but could not pass the House, as fellow Republicans pushed for more.
(23:20):
Another area involves childcare, specifically the insistence that anyone hired into a semiconductor fabrication facilityoffer childcare for their workers. Frankly, in the very tight labor market we have had, most employers at the wage levels being offered at these facilities were already planning to offer childcare. As a result, this became a political public relations misstep by the administration, and it gave the CHIPS Act some negative publicity for a short period of time. The third area is labor policy. The requirement that semiconductor fabrication facilities be constructed with union labor was part of the CHIPS and Science Act. There was no realistic way to move the legislation through a Democrat controlled Senate without that provision. Those are the three areas I wanted to highlight to provide some clarity. Some of the critiques are fair, others less so, but on balance the act has been a major success, and we have taken significant risk out of the supply chain.
Mitch Daniels (24:21):
When our Taiwanese friend says it's not going to make that much difference, and because it costs four to five times as much to build the fabs here, this isn't helping reduce that ratio.
Todd Young (24:33):
It's not helping to reduce the ratio. He's right, obviously, in terms of his bean counting, but the idea was just not to get to complete parody with other countries, but to narrow that gap. And we've done that, we've taken a lot of risk out of the supply chain, and we'll continue to watch this closely.
Mitch Daniels (24:56):
Yeah. And the forecast I've seen suggests that even with these barnacles attached, we're headed for maybe 30% share over the next few years, and that's a big improvement.
Todd Young (25:06):
That is right. I think what some of the most vociferous critics fear, first, is that this could become a slippery slope. That concern is often overstated in Congress, where slippery slope arguments are sometimes overapplied because it is easier to say no. Still, to some extent, it is a valid concern. The other concern is an effort to remind people, and I think it is a healthy reminder, of something I have already internalized. There is a reason we do not pursue much industrial policy. It is very hard to pull off, and it involves a great deal of planning. By nature, I am very skeptical of that approach, but I have to say we have done fairly well so far.
Mitch Daniels (26:00):
Well, I don't think you're in any danger of giving industrial policy a good name, even if there's one success, there's enough casualties back down the trail.
Todd Young (26:08):
That's right.
Mitch Daniels (26:09):
One last suggestion for your oversight. On the science side, there has also been some politicization that some of us have observed. This has involved violations of the principles of scientific merit and genuine peer review, as well as requirements that science be done in a certain way or by certain people, rather than in the way most likely to advance knowledge. I hope someone is closely monitoring the spending agencies and working to see that this is reined in.
Todd Young (26:46):
It's unfortunate that sometimes even the scientific method is being politicized, sort of masquerading as social policy masquerading as the scientific method. We can't allow that to happen. I agree, it's an area to be more vigilant.
Mitch Daniels (27:05):
Let me turn to the topic du jour, artificial intelligence, in the national security context. Few people have as much insight into this as you do. We have seen, at least from the perspective of us amateurs, a rapid move toward autonomous weaponry, including low cost, high quantity systems such as drones. What implications does this have for the kind of military we have traditionally built, and for our vulnerability to those who wish us ill and may not have the same resources, but may no longer need them to the same extent?
Todd Young (27:55):
This represents one of those outsized opportunities for our country. I will begin with the opportunity, though there is also risk with any change if we fail to seize it and someone else does so more effectively or more quickly. With the convergence of large data sets, the digital revolution, increased computing power, and breakthroughs in software programming, the United States finds itself in the lead in developing artificial intelligence algorithms and related technologies. These are decision making algorithms, and if they are programmed effectively, they can make decisions autonomously. What we are seeing in Ukraine is the deployment of many of these systems in swarms of what are called attritable autonomous systems. Whether beneath the ocean, in the air, or on the ground, these systems, if empowered to do so, will have the ability to make life and death decisions potentially independent of their human operators.
(29:11):
This is not without controversy, of course. I think it would be irresponsible for us to foreclose ever doing that, if we learn that our adversaries are prepared to empower their systems to do the same, but there's going to have to be standards developed and enforced, and we are in the early stages of trying to come up with these rules of the game so that we can defend our way of life, but be consistent with our values in the process.
Mitch Daniels (29:43):
That sounds good, but there are many who have seen this coming, even from a distance, and who have argued that there will be an irresistible tendency toward it. There are actors, as you mentioned earlier, who do not see the world through the same value lens that we do, and who would say there will be no alternative. Truly autonomous weapons will be used against us, and we will need to be prepared not only to resist them, but to respond. What do you think?
Todd Young (30:17):
I think we should be in that position, and I think one of the things I've learned throughout my lifetime is the importance of deterring adversaries from doing bad things. And so, there are interesting conversations and important conversations to be had about whether or not once counterparties are rational as we would define it, but I think most people want to continue to live. And in the end, our ability to deter adversaries with that ultimate threat in mind empowers our diplomats to help us avoid war, which is our ultimate objective.
Mitch Daniels (31:00):
Well, you say most people, and unfortunately we see on an almost daily basis, there are those who think that forfeiting their own life is not only acceptable, but a passport to better things, I guess.
Todd Young (31:12):
That's right. But we think about how we've tried to defend against terrorism in the past, and for me, that broadly can be captured under the heading of terrorism. That different form of warfare and deterrence theory does not work for those individuals.
(31:39):
But when you think about our largest adversaries, the Chinese, the Russians, even the Iranians or Venezuelans, I think our assessments are that these countries are led by rational people.
Mitch Daniels (31:51):
Yes. One last question about what some might see as another form of electronic warfare. There is the debate about TikTok, specifically. Is this primarily a national security question, or is it a question of freedom?
Todd Young (32:11):
It is both. It is about freedom, not just in the United States, but more broadly about defending the ability of people in other countries to invest in this country. There is a great deal wrapped into that debate. There are two vulnerabilities that make the TikTok situation different from other platforms, and it took me some time to reach this conclusion, because we effectively named and shamed a single company. I am not typically comfortable doing that in legislation, but this company was ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and collected massive amounts of user data on our citizens. That is a problem. Second, the company has the ability to weaponize the information domain.
(32:59):
It's a key domain of modern warfare, and to manipulate elections, manipulate perceptions, heck, we've even seen in Israel, which finds itself immersed in a war against the terrorist group, Hamas, we find a 50 to one pro-Hamas versus Israel communication stream on TikTok today. So, those are the two strands that caused me and my colleagues the greatest amended concern. There were others who just jumped on board because of populistic impulses.
Mitch Daniels (33:30):
Right. I asked you a minute ago about administrative agencies maybe going beyond what their statutory authority permitted. Friends of freedom have been, many of us, have been encouraged by decisions in recent times from the Supreme Court that have circumscribed, or appeared to, the ability of administrative agencies to exceed the authority Congress gave them. How positively should we view those decisions? How effective will they be? And then I have a follow-up question about what Congress does in their aftermath.
Todd Young (34:15):
Well, this is the kind of correction that many of us have pushed for for a number of decades, that is that less deference be given to unelected unaccountable bureaucrats, which is a term that many members of Congress use on the campaign stump. But then we've gone to Washington and not done anything about it. I've actually introduced legislation years ago called the REINS Act, and what the REINS Act proposes is every very large or expensive rule that goes through our government would have to come before Congress for an up or down vote.
(34:57):
That presumably would give members of Congress an incentive to get the details right before delegating broad authority to our rulemakers and the executive agency to come up with the legal parameters of our statutes. The Supreme Court basically has done that work for us by saying our country will no longer give such deference to the unelectable, unaccountable bureaucrats, but now this puts legislative responsibilities back in the laps of members of Congress.
Mitch Daniels (35:33):
Some of your colleagues may not want the present.
Todd Young (35:38):
Well, they may not. Many of them don't seem to relish the opportunity of making hard decisions, instead, they enjoy the limelight of being a member of Congress and so forth.
Mitch Daniels (35:54):
Proclaiming some lofty goal without having to vote for the consequences or costs.
Todd Young (36:01):
That's right. But I think now that the incentive structure is, as it should be, members of Congress will be looked to, to get the details right, and then if our system works as designed, the American people will be charged with holding to account those who really don't get things done.
Mitch Daniels (36:19):
Well, you've been willing for a long time, but unfortunately, I think haven't had enough help until now.
Todd Young (36:26):
Well, that's kind of you.
Mitch Daniels (36:28):
Well, we'll see. I asked you early on how often people worry about our liberties and freedoms in the meetings you attend and the settings you inhabit, clearly one side of our national debate is very, very comfortable with an ever-growing, ever more intrusive central government, one that can dictate to states and one that can dictate to a large extent to us as individuals. On the other side, there have been those who have resisted that, and tried to advocate for free markets and greater personal freedom. It's said these days that that side of the debate is now somewhat fractured, and that there are those who are sometimes described or self-described as populous who are more comfortable with interventions economically and perhaps in terms of personal choices. What do you think?
Todd Young (37:40):
So, I have some extensive thoughts, which I'll try and compress for the purposes of this, but we've seen populism on the left and right, around the world, but more narrowly here in this country in recent years. On the left, we saw a number of supporters of Bernie Sanders, when he ran for president, end up supporting Donald Trump for president, and I think those who are the strongest supporters of former President Trump would embrace the term populism. As long as from the outset, we don't make it a term of disparagement. I think if we look at populism, why has it happened? It's happened because some of our leaders have really not lived up to the responsibility of adapting our policies, our decision making to the changes in the world.
(38:45):
We have made some unwise decisions in foreign policy. The American people are not particularly happy with the way Iraq and Afghanistan turned out. Economically, it is as though the digital revolution and globalization have not happened, despite their implications for economic inequality and both upward and downward mobility. Yet we are still operating with a forty year old policy agenda that some people characterize as belonging to more traditional Republicans. Had there been incremental adaptations to the changing world around us, I do not think populism would be as strong as it is today. That is, of course, a compressed explanation of the forces at work. The challenge for those of us who do not want to offer superficial or unworkable solutions is to develop new approaches that can achieve the outcomes desired by followers of populist leaders.
(39:53):
What are your answers for ensuring that my kids have more opportunity, even though they grew up in an area that's less dynamic and with lower socioeconomic status? What are your answers to living in this increasingly multipolar world? How are we going to change our foreign policy? Some pretty fundamental questions and I think we've gotten soft and sloppy.
Mitch Daniels (40:20):
So, final question, I like to ask each of our guests this. It's 2050, is America more free or less free than America of today?
Todd Young (40:31):
The America of 2050 is going to be more free than the America of today. Unless anyone thinks that that's just a politician ending on an upbeat note, which I suppose would be fair. If you just look at our history, the one defining quality of our history is adaptation, innovation, Americans always find a way. And we always find a way because of liberty, because of freedom, because we've been empowered to find a way to adapt, improvise, and overcome. And I think that that will make us more free in the future. Materially, better, it will make us feel more secure, and it will reinstill a certain confidence in our basic institutions, which are charged at helping us collectively work together to adapt.
Mitch Daniels (41:30):
I buy it. And one reason I buy it is because I've spent this time talking to a cardinal example, really, that new solutions can be found that are responsive and that are sensitive to the very legitimate concerns of everyday people. And I want to thank you, Senator Todd Young, for these moments together, but much more so for your leadership, the example you're setting in our legislative, and national life. Go forth and multiply, please. Thank you for coming, thank you all for joining us.
Outro (42:09):
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