SALT LAKE CITY — Senate candidate Mitt Romney headlined the Utah Technology Innovation Summit Wednesday where executives and inventors from across the state came together for a day of discussion about technology and science in the Beehive State.

Here are three takeaways from Romney’s keynote speech:

There are 4 main competitors on the world stage

1. United States: The economy and government of the U.S. is built on free markets, free enterprise and personal freedom, Romney said.

2. Russia: After embracing a “form of capitalism,” Russia gave control of the country to 20 people who haven’t made it a point to invest in technologies that will help the state, Romney said. Russia will eventually compete as a center for military technology and has spent a lot of its time bringing the country’s nuclear capacity up to speed.

3. China: The Asian country has challenges of its own. China’s population is heavily skewed toward the elderly and there isn’t, proportionally, enough women. But China has invested in infrastructure, not only in their country but in other countries that supply Chinese businesses with raw materials.

4. Jihadists: The terrorists are so authoritarian and chaotic that they’ve forced the world to turn to them and pay attention.

“I’m optimistic about the future. Only one country has a strategy based on personal freedom: ours,” Romney said. “All others are authoritarian in nature. Can they compete in a world of modern technology?”

However, Romney warned that it’s important for the U.S. to be strategic and watch out for a growing national debt and sense of protectionism.

We are witnessing an inflection point in U.S. history

At certain points in history, the world changes all at once, Romney said. This change encompasses everything from the economy to military to culture.

The year of the American Revolution, 1776, was one of these inflection points in history, and so was the Industrial Revolution. Now, Romney believes the U.S. and the world have reached another inflection point as technology rapidly changes reality.

According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, about one-third of the world’s jobs will be replaced by technology within the next 20 years, Romney said. Others predict it may be as many as one-half, as artificial intelligence becomes a more significant part of the technological landscape.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams also emphasized during the summit the importance of making sure that the jobs that will be lost to technology become manufacturing jobs in the technology sectors that are expanding.

Utah needs to invest in deep technology

Utah’s Silicon Slopes is filled with software-as-a-service companies that are “growing like crazy,” Romney said. And while Utah is lucky to have them, the Beehive State also needs to invest in “deep technology.”

While deep technology can sometimes be difficult to define, it generally means an idea or company founded on a scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation.

“There are also deep technology innovators that need to be attracted to our state,” Romney said. “You might say the venture capital guys will take care of that, but 90 percent of venture capital investment (in the state) has gone to software-as-a-service businesses.”

Deep technology businesses are essential for long-term growth, but take a long time to generate the kind of revenue that venture capitalists want, he said.

In order to sustain the technology growth in Utah, it’s also important to remember the “hard sciences” in the state, including aerospace and life sciences, McAdams and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox said during an earlier portion of the summit.

While Silicon Slopes is growing quickly, so is the often overlooked and forgotten area of technological developments in the hard sciences, and both need to be represented in the Legislature, according to Cox.

“This is not about making money, though there’s nothing wrong with that, but this is about preserving personal freedom,” Romney said.

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