First I've heard that Gates and Jobs and Woz and their employees were looking for defense work and couldn't find it. LOL!
How many yachts does your average defense worker own?
Defense workers happen because of G, J, and W, not the other way around!
We are getting the first smartphone manufacturing plant in the nation down here because of low regulation, low taxes, no mandatory unions, competitive wage rates...and a desire to build a quality product by the employees.
This in opposition to “make my 8 hours” and “give me more money and benefits regardless of how I do my job” in the old industrialized, highly unionized states.
The work ethic and desire to do somehthing new is still alive, just not in Washington and the Northeast.
It would’ve been hillarious watching Gates, Jobs, and The Woz seeking defense work, but that’s nowhere near what I meant.
I meant to say that with the Cold War won, the tech industry now had the pick of the crop of newly minted engineers and tech workers, which the country no longer needed in the defense industry.
In other words, Reagan’s win made it possible for the tech industry to build itself up more quickly and easily because it to no longer needed to compete with the so-called military-industrial complex for workers.
Just remember, before high tech, many of the moguls, such as Howard Hughes who had much more than some rinkydink fleet of yacths, earned their money in defense.