San Diego

San Diego's economy runs on three things the rest of the country would prefer not to think about: the military, the border, and biotech that manipulates living systems. The combination makes it America's most strategically interesting city and one of its least understood.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542, making it the first point of European contact on the US West Coast. The Spanish built Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769—California's first mission—but the city's modern identity was forged by the US Navy, which established a permanent presence during World War I and never left. Naval Base San Diego is the largest naval base on the West Coast. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and Naval Air Station North Island add up to a defense economy worth over $25 billion annually to the region.

The biotech cluster emerged from research universities. UC San Diego (founded 1960), the Salk Institute (1960), and the Scripps Research Institute created a knowledge base that spawned over 1,200 life sciences companies. Illumina, the genomic sequencing company, is headquartered here. San Diego's biotech sector generates over $15 billion in revenue and employs roughly 70,000 workers—one of the largest life sciences clusters in the world.

The Tijuana border crossing—San Ysidro—is the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere. Over 70,000 people cross daily in each direction, creating a binational metro area where manufacturing happens in Tijuana at Mexican wages and management happens in San Diego at American salaries. The border isn't a wall—it's a membrane, selectively permeable to labor, capital, and goods.

San Diego's climate (average temperature 70°F, 266 sunny days annually) functions as an economic subsidy: it attracts talent that would otherwise need higher salaries to live in less pleasant places.

San Diego proves that the intersection of military, academic, and border economies creates something none could produce alone.