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Harry Scholes's avatar

Interesting link between this episode, which states that U.S. R&D can only beat China by being a coalition of the best minds from the rest of the world, and the recent Allied Scale episode. Which makes this administration’s stupidity all the more dumb.

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Nirmal Iyengar's avatar

These discussions focus mostly on technical issues. While that’s important, I think some non-technical factors may have a bigger impact on future R&D growth.

First, the U.S. built much of its R&D strength by attracting foreign scientists—starting with Europeans after WWII, and more recently from China and India. They came in part because of the economic disparity, and their home country was large. But that gap has shrunk, especially in China, and India may soon follow. The gains by being able to cherry pick high-quality talent from large population countries cannot be ignored

Second, people drawn to high-level R&D often come from cultures that place a strong value on academics—something less common in the U.S.

These factors need to to be included in any projections of possible outcomes

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