SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good morning, everyone. It's been a great pleasure to be here at NEC to see the extraordinary work that NEC does, but also the extraordinary collaboration that we've had between the United States and NEC and between the United States and Japan. NEC is - I think some of you heard - is a major investor in the United States, supporting thousands of jobs in the United States. Japan of course is our leading foreign direct investment investor, supporting some million jobs in the United States with hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. And by the way, the United States is the leading destination for foreign direct investment now, which is, I think, a gauge of tremendous credibility, success of our economies and the way the world sees them.
But our leading partner is Japan, we're grateful for that, but it's not just the investment. It's what we're doing together with that investment, as well as the work that the United States is doing here in Japan. NEC's an incredible example of that. You've seen the leading-edge work that they're doing on undersea cables, the leading-edge work that they're doing on the communications systems, Open RAN networks, that we believe are the future for digital communications. And we know every single day that what's connecting us around the world, physically and visually, are these cables and the systems that run on them. And we want to make sure that these systems are trusted, that they're secure, and that people can be connected all around the world. And that's the essence of the partnership that we have.
Our diplomacy works every day to try to make sure that our companies - companies from countries, partners like Japan - have a level playing field to compete effectively whenever there's something to compete for, and that we have a world that's connected, that's resilient, and that's working with trusted vendors like NEC. So this is a critical part of American diplomacy, it's a critical part of the work that we do with Japan, and of course you see it playing out in other places - Japan and the United States working together with the Philippines, for example, on testing out and actually commercializing the Open RAN system.
So I'm grateful for this. For us, this partnership is absolutely essential. Thank you.
