Some of you may have seen Tuesday s Wall Street Journal . It noted that, over the past decade, when adjusted for splits, the value of America Online shares has increased more than 61,000 percent. And Cisco s shares are up more than 75,000 percent. The authors calculated that the market value of the entire U.S. defense industry is now less than that of single Internet company Yahoo that did not even exist seven years ago. Well, times are not that bad for defense.
Times are that good for our nation.
This is not a zero-sum game. It is an evolving, growing economy based on technology that is changing at an astonishing velocity. The more industry here improves its potential, the more talented young people you attract into high-tech fields. So your strength, over time, becomes our strength. That is certainly something that David Packard understood.