The US has: an old, stable, trustworthy democratic government (trustworthy in the sense that the people trust elections and the courts, i.e. “the system”, not n

The US has: an old, stable, trustworthy democratic government (trustworthy in the sense that the people trust elections and the courts, i.e. “the system”, not necessarily any single president or party), a huge population, an astonishing amount of natural resources (relative to population - both land and what’s in it), and excellent natural barriers. It’s near the top of the world in any of these categories alone, but if you combine them, it’s pretty much impossible to beat (unless it collapses from internal tensions of course). Edit: Also, in the grand scheme of things, Silicon Valley isn’t even that important... most of the startup-y companies could turn to dust tomorrow and the world would go on, with less Instagram photos but with the US still on top. Sure, there are some companies that actually do stuff (Intel, Cisco, Apple, etc) but most have foreign or open-source alternatives anyhow.