Simon did not attend the signing ceremony for Westeros' investment in Gilead, but he was in San Francisco at the time and stayed for three days.
His schedule was packed.
The most important task was to finalize the arrangements regarding Gilead. As the company's largest shareholder, Simon's first action was to solidify Donald Rumsfeld's position as chairman. However, after gaining a deeper understanding of the company, Simon made some adjustments. Rumsfeld's initial role as CEO was changed to chairman, while John Martin, the company's chief scientist responsible for product development, took over as CEO.
Previously, both the chairman and CEO positions had been held by Gilead's founder, Michael O'Dan. This marked his formal step into the background.
However, this didn't mean O'Dan was being sidelined.
In fact, as Simon learned more about Gilead, he realized that Michael O'Dan was the true driving force behind the company. While Donald Rumsfeld's governmental connections played a crucial role in Gilead's rise, it was O'Dan who successfully leveraged those resources to lead Gilead to the top.
This is similar to the well-known background of Warren Buffett.
Buffett's father was a congressman, and his grandfather left the family a considerable inheritance. He grew up surrounded by government officials and corporate executives, and his casual neighbor, Donald Keough, later became the president of Coca-Cola, greatly facilitating Buffett's most successful investment.
Many attribute Buffett's success to his background.
But they overlook one thing.
Many people have backgrounds like Buffett's, yet only Warren Buffett became a world-renowned investor and billionaire.
That's the difference.
At 37 years old, Michael O'Dan held both a medical doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard, making him an exceptionally talented individual. At 29, when he founded Gilead, he had already attracted figures like the former U.S. Secretary of Defense to the company's board of directors, demonstrating that O'Dan's family background was no less impressive than Buffett's.
Over the past eight years, despite Gilead's near failures, O'Dan managed to keep the company afloat, successfully completing an IPO. Even though there were some shady dealings involved, his abilities were beyond question.
The most important factor was that Simon found during their discussions that O'Dan's vision for Gilead's future mirrored the company's real-life trajectory exactly as Simon remembered.
Moreover, O'Dan showed remarkable grace in the face of Simon's proposal to install Rumsfeld as chairman. Not only did he agree, but he also willingly stepped down from the CEO role, handing it to the highly capable chief scientist, John Martin. This impressed Simon even more.
Letting go is never easy.
O'Dan's concession would send positive signals to the market.
With Rumsfeld as chairman, Gilead's strong government connections became evident. It was clear that this would ensure the smooth approval of Gilead's new drug by the FDA and possibly even fast-track its entry into the U.S. Medicare system.
On that note, it's worth mentioning something.
Ordinary people often wish that all expensive, life-saving drugs would be covered by Medicare, making them affordable when needed. They believe that including such drugs in Medicare is a sign that the government is prioritizing healthcare.
But is this really the case?
Take, for example, Gilead's Hepatitis C drugs in Simon's memory, which cost $80,000 per treatment. Once included in Medicare, ordinary Americans with insurance could indeed afford it. However, people often overlook the fact that these funds ultimately come from taxpayers. The skyrocketing cost of healthcare in the U.S. is partly due to this very system.
Thus, including expensive drugs in Medicare doesn't necessarily mean the government is focusing on public welfare, nor does excluding some drugs indicate a disregard for people's suffering.
In many cases, the truth is quite the opposite.
Returning to the topic, with Rumsfeld as chairman ensuring government connections and Martin as CEO emphasizing product development, these two personnel changes, along with Gilead's soon-to-be-launched new drug, were enough to shift the market's view of the company.
Additionally, with Gilead now part of the Westeros System, its future was wide open.
Next, Gilead could follow its original development path by acquiring other pharmaceutical startups in similar fields, building a monopoly in immune deficiency and antiviral drugs, while leveraging its government ties to break into Medicare. This would allow Gilead to expand its market share and eventually soar.
Michael O'Dan would be responsible for executing these moves.
Even though he had stepped down as chairman and CEO, O'Dan still held 12.7% of Gilead's shares as its founder. With Simon's full support, he was free to guide Gilead's future according to his vision.
After settling matters with Gilead and handling a few affairs with other Silicon Valley companies, Simon accepted an invitation on Friday to visit the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located in Livermore in the eastern Bay Area.
This federal laboratory, founded by Nobel laureate Ernest Lawrence and the father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, was under the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Department of Energy. It was operated by the University of California and focused on cutting-edge research in chemistry, supercomputers, nuclear weapons, and other fields.
The lab extended the invitation to Simon after learning that the young billionaire was interested in controlled nuclear fusion and had even reportedly considered funding the ITER project. Coincidentally, another fusion research project led by the lab had been shelved due to federal budget cuts in recent years, so they reached out.
The project was called the National Ignition Facility (NIF).
Launched two years ago to secure federal funding, the NIF aimed to achieve nuclear fusion by using multiple high-energy lasers to bombard fusion fuel and trigger a fusion reaction. Unlike the magnetic confinement method used by tokamaks and stellarators, laser ignition technology relied on the inertial force generated by laser bombardment to create the high-temperature environment necessary for fusion. This method is known as inertial confinement fusion.
Both the tokamak, stellarator, and laser ignition were concepts proposed in the 1950s and 60s.
Since Simon began focusing on this field last year, he had studied a great deal of material and had a solid understanding of the various mainstream approaches to controlled nuclear fusion.
Compared to the magnetic confinement method of tokamaks and stellarators, the biggest advantage of laser ignition was its potential for miniaturization. Some experts believed that if humanity were to develop fusion-powered spacecraft in the future, laser ignition would be the best option. Meanwhile, the large size of tokamaks and stellarators would make them more suitable for building nuclear power plants or powering large ships and aircraft carriers.
However, laser ignition technology came with a controversial aspect.
Once matured, it could also be used to create nuclear weapons. Unlike current hydrogen bombs, which require atomic bombs to trigger fusion and result in significant radioactive fallout, laser-ignited hydrogen bombs would be clean and leave no radiation, making them viable for use as conventional weapons.
Imagine a hydrogen bomb that could instantly kill millions, but was "clean" and "non-radioactive."
It sounds ironic. However, because of this characteristic, laser-ignited hydrogen bombs could bypass the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which only bans nuclear weapons that produce radioactive fallout. It's a testament to humanity's relentless drive to find loopholes in its quest for self-destruction.
Simon was genuinely interested in advancing controlled nuclear fusion technology.
However, after visiting the facility, he dismissed any thoughts of supporting it.
Mainly because he wanted to live longer.
Since last year, Simon had been studying, thinking about, and recalling his knowledge of space exploration, nuclear energy, and related fields.
One of the most striking examples he encountered was in the space sector.
People often lament the decline in human space technology. Even Simon had once believed this to be true.
Humans landed on the moon in the 1960s, yet by the 21st century, the task seemed increasingly difficult, giving rise to conspiracy theories that the moon landing had been a hoax.
However, when Simon delved deeper, he found the key issue.
The Apollo moon landing occurred during the height of the Cold War, with both the U.S. and the Soviet Union pouring their entire national strength into the competition, with no concern for costs.
The most typical example is the Saturn V rocket used by the U.S. to land on the moon.
The Saturn V is often cited as proof that human space technology has regressed.
The rocket could carry up to 140 tons into low Earth orbit. Yet, decades later, no rocket has been able to surpass 100 tons. Even the highly praised SpaceX Falcon Heavy has a maximum payload of just 64 tons to low Earth orbit.
At first glance, this seems like clear regression.
However, most people overlook one crucial factor: cost!
In the 1960s, a single Saturn V rocket cost $500 million. At the time, America's most advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, cost $450 million. By today's standards, the Saturn V's cost would be equivalent to billions of dollars.
So, how much does a SpaceX Falcon Heavy cost?
$60 million!
140 tons versus 64 tons.
$10 billion versus $60 million.
Regression?
Not at all.
The root cause is that modern nations can no longer afford to funnel their entire resources into a single project.
A true "all-in" national effort.
However, the biggest lesson Simon drew from this was something else: perhaps, if SpaceX had built the Saturn V instead of the government and its contractors, the cost wouldn't have been $500 million per rocket. Maybe $45 million would have sufficed.
Exactly.
In any country, under
any system, government-led initiatives inevitably suffer from inefficiencies and waste.
This problem isn't unique to the space sector.
The same holds true for nuclear fusion research.
Projects like ITER and the National Ignition Facility, both shelved in recent years due to budget cuts following the Soviet Union's collapse, involved massive investments of tens of billions of dollars.
But did they really need that much money?
The reason SpaceX could achieve such low costs was Elon Musk's relentless focus on cost-cutting.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other state-backed aerospace giants rest comfortably on government contracts, relying on outdated technologies from the 1960s, buying components at exorbitant prices, and proudly touting their global procurement strategies without considering cost-effectiveness.
In contrast, SpaceX produced most of its components in-house. Where Boeing would spend millions on parts, SpaceX made the same for thousands, sometimes even just a few hundred dollars. This is why, no matter how much the government favored Boeing and Lockheed, they simply couldn't compete with SpaceX.
When the U.S. eventually revived its lunar mission, pouring billions into Boeing and Lockheed to relaunch the Apollo program, the results were dismal. After burning through a vast amount of money, it became clear that these companies had lost the capability to execute a lunar mission. The only viable solution was SpaceX.
On Friday, Simon saw much of the same at the Lawrence Livermore Lab as he remembered from these stories.
The lab, which employed over 2,000 PhDs, felt more like a retirement home. Moreover, due to the recent government budget cuts, the entire facility had an air of complacency, with no drive for progress.
It was just a job.
The planned National Ignition Facility was expected to cost $3 billion and take 10 years to complete, similar to the ITER project's large tokamak device.
According to the project lead, they were following a global procurement strategy.
But was such a long construction timeline and such a high cost truly necessary?
A large team of highly educated yet unmotivated engineers clocking in from 9 to 5, spending days discussing a single component, delaying if things didn't feel quite right, leisurely sipping coffee while tightening screws, and taking regular breaks along the way. At this pace, of course it would cost $3 billion and take 10 years.
Then Simon thought about Boeing and Lockheed burning through government funds, only to prove they could no longer carry out a lunar mission.
It all made sense.
This was not what Simon wanted.
At first, he had considered poaching a team from these top-tier research institutions, but he quickly abandoned the idea.
What Simon needed was a team with the same pioneering spirit as SpaceX—innovative, bold, and ready to challenge norms—not a group of complacent academics content with their cushy jobs.
Fortunately, the Westeros System already had plenty of such talent.
Simon was also confident that some within the lab still retained their drive.
The Solvay Project, aimed at nurturing world-changing geniuses, would take time to bear fruit. However, Simon wasn't willing to wait years. Before returning to Los Angeles, he instructed his team to begin searching for individuals interested in advancing humanity's space and nuclear energy capabilities. One small goal was to track down Elon Musk, who should already be in Silicon Valley by now.
Though Simon had no shortage of talent, Musk had already proven himself capable in the original timeline, and this presented a shortcut.
Simon planned to put him in charge of the newly registered SpaceX, which had been quietly established last year.
As for nuclear fusion and energy, Simon needed people with similar qualities, but he wouldn't place all the weight on just one person.
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