I would love to hear about, you know, 10 years ago, when, when you helped found Solve, what did... what was that, what was that like? What got that idea in your head, and how, how have you seen it kind of evolve?

Well, I mean, the world is full of problems, [laughs] full of problems that need to be addressed and need to be solved.

And, uh, um, you know, I, I, uh, I've been at MIT for many years, uh, before I thought of Solve, and I realized that I enjoy the environment at MIT and enjoy the people of MIT.

I enjoy how eager they are to, to learn and to advance knowledge and to, to solve problems and to try to make the world better.

Um, I enjoy that.

I admire that, and I'm part of that.

And then I realized, uh, but it's so bad that, that I only see that in a few places.

But with, with an organization like Solve, how do you see the next 10 years? How-

Although firms could fill some of the void left by the federal government, Professor Reif warns that private companies cannot be counted on to pick up the full $60 billion tab being paid by the U.S. for research, particularly the type of basic research that universities specialize in.

There is, of course, research done in corporations, in companies, but most of that research in companies is done on a roadmap of products.

The company's thinking that in five years from now or 10 years from now, I need to have this product ready.

So the research is being done focused on getting that product ready.

federally funded research in universities is actually to advance knowledge.

It's not for a particular for-profit purpose.

It's just to advance knowledge.

But it's particularly an issue now when the U.S. has a strong economic competitor in its rival, China.

So what is important about the government funding and What impact is the lack of government funding or cutbacks going to be in terms of innovation and tech innovations, U.S. leadership, so on?

Look, there are things that the U.S. needed to do to compete with China.

two months ago, up to two months ago.

Now with what's going on with the government, I view that they are destroying some of our assets and we still have to fix what we were not doing that well before.

So let me assume that nothing happened and with federal government funding continues.

And what is the problem we have? Let me summarize in the following way.

It was maybe 10 years ago or so, in one of my trips to China, I was the guest of a bunch of high-tech leaders in China.

What happens if the government cuts back? And can the universities do more stuff like you did at this engine at MIT?