00:02:23.400And if you just look in recent months, we've now announced that AstraZeneca has now made the largest private investment in Maryland in over a decade.
00:02:31.360It's going to support about 2,600 jobs.
00:02:32.820We saw how Samsung Biologics has just announced that it's creating its first manufacturing facility in the United States, and they're creating it in Maryland.
00:02:40.440We saw how the sphere in Las Vegas, the sphere, is now, you know, it announced it's doing its second one in Abu Dhabi.
00:02:47.560Its second one they're doing in the United States is in Prince George's County, Maryland.
00:03:08.800So we are making sure we're incentivizing our businesses to be able to come to the state of Maryland and providing the right kind of incentives and providing the right kind of climate and environment.
00:03:16.660But also, we have to make sure we're investing in the things that makes businesses want to come to our state.
00:03:23.380You know what makes business want to come to our state?
00:03:25.080That it's one of the most educated states inside the country.
00:03:30.740And if you look at the state of Maryland, we have the fastest jumps in reading scores anywhere in the United States of America under the leadership of Dr. Kerry, right?
00:03:37.800That we are making sure that we're providing a greater level of support when it comes to our anchor institutions.
00:03:47.700We're the home of the United States Naval Academy, of Johns Hopkins University, of NIST, of the only pure play public company in quantum, which is IonQ, where literally we are the capital of quantum.
00:04:01.100And so you have to also create the ecosystem that makes businesses want to come, that makes businesses want to grow and thrive.
00:04:06.580And so that's the thing I think you have to be able to do, that, yes, it's about tax policy and making it more attractive for businesses.
00:04:13.280And, by the way, we're now seeing how Maryland's population is the fastest growing population we've had in Maryland in over a decade.
00:04:26.200But if you look at the population growth that we've had over the past decade, net migration has actually been a challenge in Maryland that we've had for a very long period of time.
00:04:35.000But we're now actually starting to see a population growth.
00:04:37.480Yeah, so 2010 to 23, a net loss of 300,000 residents, 2.3 million leaving and 2 million moving in.
00:07:51.740And I think about it from a founder's perspective and from an entrepreneur's perspective, right?
00:07:55.700Where if I ask a founder, what is it that you do?
00:07:59.860No founder worth of salt is going to tell me, oh, I do everything.
00:08:03.220Because then what it's telling me is you're not focused. What does your company do? And why are you best in class? And I think part of the problem is that for a lot of states, that's kind of been the answer. Where if you look at Maryland, Maryland has said, you know, that we have been focusing on the Eds, the Feds and the Meds, right? That's kind of been Maryland's economic base. And it's been like that for a very long time.
00:08:23.560One of the things that I've been focusing on is saying, what are we doing to diversify our economy?
00:08:28.220Because we cannot simply rely on who's sitting in the Oval Office.
00:08:31.140Or if you look at the fact that, you know, in the past year, I've had over 31,000 people fired, federal workers, you know.
00:08:38.140And so that's more than any state in this country.
00:08:40.620There's been no state that's been under a greater level of assault than what we've seen from this federal administration than Maryland.
00:08:47.080So we've got to find a way to diversify our economy and quickly.
00:08:50.800And so I decided that I said, here are the things that we are going to target.