Billy Riggs (00:41)
Welcome back to, Rewiring the American edge. and today we are, looking at some of our lessons thus far. So where have we been? the last 16 episodes, lessons, themes, turning points,

I'm Billy Riggs and I'm joined by that handsome man, Vipul Vyas. And after 16 episodes, we are going to do something a little different. We're going to pause, look back and connect the dots. Vipul, what do you think?

Vipul Vyas (01:10)
I think that we're figuring out that American cities are among other things, are sources of competitive advantage or potentially in some cases, disadvantage if things don't go well. So making sure our cities are running effectively and creating value for the citizens and

the country overall, they're kind of our economic locomotives. And so if they're anything less than optimally functioning, we as a country are not going to be very competitive. And so I think now we have notable competition from cities on the rise from around the world, and we can't be viewed as yesterday's model and not tomorrow's. So.

Billy Riggs (01:38)
Yeah.

That's right.

Vipul Vyas (01:50)
There's a lot to catch up on there. Yeah.

Billy Riggs (01:53)
Yeah. And, I think I've been telling people and talking to people as we, after we started this and as we, stop and connect the dots and we, look at the themes that are surfacing, we should be honest with, you, listeners and say that we did, we were very intentional when we started this, this podcast, we, had a little bit of a, story arc that we wanted to, tell to you.

And it was really about automation, innovation and global competition. We had a little bit of it mapped out. There were some surprises, but as we've continued to emphasize as well, one of the core themes is what makes the American edge so great. And what makes America great is everything that isn't about America. And I think we've, we've emphasized that again and again.

that what makes America a global competitor is that it is everything global about America. It's bringing global competition to cities. It's bringing global innovation here. it's being open to international.

trade is bringing open to immigration. It's being open to new ideas and new people and investment. And so I think we've seen that openness be a real theme, but it's also not blind openness. And I think maybe that's where we start. And I think when we started with episode one, we called it the great rewiring.

And, we, talked a little bit about cities, technology and competitiveness. And you really hit on this idea of cities that first episode. And we started talking about Bay area cities. You compared San Francisco and San Jose, even in that first episode as a tale of two cities.

And it really set a tone that it's not just about the shiny technology. It's about the structures that keep society functioning when things get really messy. Right, Vipul?

Vipul Vyas (03:47)
Yeah, I think there has been a renewed focus on pragmatism and making sure that the most basic services first and foremost work and then layering more sophisticated capabilities on top of that.

Now, I don't think we're in that phase two of the more sophisticated capabilities. I think there's still a lot of work that has to be done and that is being done across the board on just getting some of those basic services back in a good place. So that is been the priority of mayors in the Bay Area specifically.

And I think that makes a lot of sense. And so I think once they feel like they're in a good place there, they all seem to have their mind already on the sites of, well, what's next? What's after that? Which I think is great. I mean, I think that's saying their North Star is better or greater than just making sure the city is functional. It's how does it get to be competitive on the global stage again, which we have taken for granted for so long.

But there's real competition now. That's great.

Billy Riggs (04:51)
So, in episode two, we really talked about, know, various themes related to labor. We called that unpacking labor and, kind of focusing on the implications of trade and the balance between decentralized versus vertical integration in business. If you recall, Vipul you gave a classic

Business school lecture and that I think that really led into episode three, where I gave a little primer in this idea of resilience and redundancy.

And that was a solo episode that I did. I was, at a conference in Spain and it was one of the first episodes where we focused on automation and AI. And we've done a couple of those, and how automation and AI will revolutionize, our economy. And I think we use that as a jumping off point to bring in some

really interesting speakers and in the next episode we brought in Seneca Scott and what do you recall from from that episode Vipul?

Vipul Vyas (05:53)
I think we talked about a variety of things, one of which is with AI coming so fast, being a bigger and bigger part of our lives and along with other technologies that are offshoots of AI, robotics, what does that mean from a workforce and development and employment perspective?

And I think we're talking a good bit about UBI in terms of universal basic income and also a related notion of universal basic infrastructure. And should the investments be made? We talked a little bit about how UBI hadn't in studies thus far at least to be very effective. there are different environmental factors for that.

Billy Riggs (06:19)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (06:32)
to various studies that we to. But novel thing was really thinking about universal basic infrastructure, is a form of wealth and in a way, an indirect way for

the community in general by having, I mean, just look, I'm better off by having the roads and the sidewalks and the school and the infrastructure that I get to enjoy. So there's significant value to that. That isn't necessarily a direct monetary payment. And it sometimes gets forgotten about and maybe not properly valued.

Billy Riggs (06:43)
Yeah.

Yeah. So we laid this foundation, on what is this global rewiring. And then we dove deep in this idea of cities and communities and, and how automation really kind of set us up this future of not only universal basic income, but potentially universal basic infrastructure. And then asking questions, are cities future ready? And then jumping off about.

land use and curbs and we had a section, episode five, we had a really interesting discussion. We called it guarding the gates. And this is actually where you had strong opinions about, how much do we actually have free trade? How much do we actually trust

foreign affiliations, when we have this inflow and outflow of knowledge, what's the need for our institutions to be mindful of geopolitical tensions? And this was a really fascinating conversation we had jumping off of some of the issues and tensions that we had where...

that bump up against issues of academic freedom and innovation and security. And so you recall that really interesting discussion we had that talked about a kind of a new era of global security, but also the technology risks that posed.

Vipul Vyas (08:19)
Yeah, I mean, think there's the ability, you know, there's a sort of a...

Billy Riggs (08:31)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (08:52)
reward systems and with a little bit of information or a suspicion of what those things might be, I can actually serve you up content, I can actually do things that may be highly persuasive to you ⁓ in a way that's to my benefit and aligned with my interests. So...

Billy Riggs (09:04)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (09:09)
It's, you we live in a free society in a free country and the free flow of ideas is something we don't want to impede by any means, but it does create interesting risks and opportunities for all sorts of actors of all stripes. And I think we just have to be cognizant of that. And given how much time we spend on our phones these days or whatever digital media.

Billy Riggs (09:27)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (09:37)
modality is your preference, you're going to get exposed to things that are going to make you think, which is good, but they're also going to be trying to influence your thinking, good or bad. And you can do it very effectively, cost effectively, at scale, while at the same time being personalized and by virtue of being personalized, it being pretty effective.

compelling and, you know, behavior altering.

Billy Riggs (10:02)
Yeah, yeah. And then so we jumped away from this topic a little bit on kind of the trade and ideas piece. And we drove really heavy into kind of the nuts and bolts of city planning for a couple of weeks with me and Dr. Henriette Cornet and John Gilderbloom with talking about land use.

and curbs and what the future of urban planning might look like. And if you remember, a lot of what we were talking about there was how we think about the future of streets and urban spaces. And I'll be very curious because I think during this phase, you you have a lot of opinions about kind of

where cities are broken. I think I spent a lot of time talking about how we can rethink them. And we spent a lot of time pulling ideas out of Dr. Cornet about her experience. And she was in Europe over the summer and she was telling us about some of the ideas that were coming out, some of the case studies in Europe, I think in at Hamburger Hochbahn and some of the stuff coming out of Oslo. But

what were your takeaways in terms of best practice or some of the things that you learned from some of those examples that we heard from, from John Gilderbloom, who talked to us a little bit about climate change and social justice.

Do you have any strong takeaways from any of that?

Vipul Vyas (11:22)

some degrees of social a political environment. There's all these things in the drug crisis, right? All these factors that are stress on cities. And I think cities probably need more degrees of freedom to be able to organically adapt.

to those challenges. So I think we've gotten rules and ⁓ constraints that are rooted in probably things that were relevant several decades ago.

Billy Riggs (12:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (12:11)
from zoning to permitting to what have you, that sort of the brass tacks stuff. And it really doesn't allow for the city to dynamically evolve given these very rapidly changing forces that are undermining the vibrancy of these cities. So that's one thing. And then the second thing is basically getting a much clearer picture around how...

Billy Riggs (12:12)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (12:34)
money is allocated in the city. That goes back to the whole idea of the universal basic infrastructure. I think for a really long time it's very easy to, it's been very easy to play, I don't want say hide the ball, but direct funds and concentrate them in areas where there's existing political power. And I think that in general we were doing a much better job around that with some of the things that have been in focus in the last few years around

Billy Riggs (12:40)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (13:00)
a little bit more and handedness in that wealth distribution investment. I think that if we have the notion of universal basic infrastructure, that will help further drive that. You know, we're trying to make sure there aren't people and neighborhoods that are just left behind because they don't really have a great voice, a very loud voice.

Billy Riggs (13:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. in episode six, in the middle of June, had a Ruth Whitaker,

And one thing always jumps out to me when I hear her talk is that there are hundreds of jobs that are created from automating transportation systems. And a lot of people get duped into believing that, that automation just as a net job eliminator, but automation and innovation are

net job creators. And I think people, people want to slow down the wheels of innovation thinking that it will slow down growth, but it actually is a growth engine and that it will generate jobs. will not generate contraction.

And if I was to kind of then pivot to one of our other guests, probably one of my two favorite episodes were probably episode 12, which was AI policy with Marcy Harris. It's probably my mother's favorite episode too, because Marcy is just amazing. And episode 13, which was, the, our interview with Parker, Parker Hunzelman.

And so if you remember Parker just talked a lot about innovating in his factory. And I think what he's dealing with in terms of educating the workforce of the future is exactly what we're talking about. He's innovating his factory and that those, those innovations he's putting in place, they are enabling him to work smarter. He may hire more talented people, but he still hiring.

He's just got to work smarter and better. For me, what he said really resonates. And what Marcy is saying too, is resonating too. She's running so fast to get people to deploy technology in Congress and to deploy AI in Congress. The issue there is that I think there's a lot of fear

at that intersection of AI and legislation. Then there's a lot of challenges in keeping democratic institutions aligned with the rapid change of technology advancement. And of course, that's what she calls the pacing problem. Technology just moves much faster than the wheels of government. And how do you, how do you get government to move as fast as

technology changes. and that is an age old question. Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (15:28)
Yeah, that's a tough one.

a tough one. But I think that's a pretty effective summary. And I think where we're diving in next is sort of like after having outlined the challenges is getting into some of those solutions and talking to our

Billy Riggs (15:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, as we wrapped up, I think we should definitely say thank you to everybody who's listening;

our most downloaded episode has been, Dr. Cornet.

She wins with "Ride share, robo taxi and business models episode 14". And Marcy Harris, is number two So those are our two, biggest episodes. Our core listeners are in the US but, the second highest listener concentration is

none other than in Hong Kong. We've got a global listener base. we, really are appreciative and we've gotten, some questions from, both, the Netherlands and Ireland. Thank you so much for those questions. Like I said, we're going to get to some of those questions, in the future. Thank you for getting those in. Of course, episode one was the worst and we were figuring this out at that point, but we're, getting better all the time.

Vipul Vyas (16:09)
wow.

Billy Riggs (16:31)
just so you know, we've got, we have a couple of episodes already in the hopper that'll be coming soon. And we're continuing to innovate and do some cool stuff. We weren't sure we were going to continue this. but I think we'll, we'll keep it up for a little while, but for now,

what are some summarizing themes for our first 16 episodes.

Vipul Vyas (16:49)
We just, our cities have to compete. That's the new world.

Billy Riggs (16:53)
Yeah.

This edge is not fixed, right? It's shifting. And if any city in the US, Asia, South America, Europe, if you want to compete, you got to stay a nimble. You got to educate yourself. You have to be imaginative. I would say cities are laboratories. The workforce is our backbone.

Trust as well as governance have to exist. That's our glue. So we would just say thank you again. Coming up next, we have new conversations, new voices. We have new geographies. We're going to be talking about more experiments at the future of tech and society. Tell us your feedback. Send us a note. Share this with your colleagues and give us a review.

wherever you listen to podcasts and help us keep this conversation going. Thank you so much for sticking with us thus far. This has been Rewiring the American Edge.