It’s simply because the US is the richest country on the planet[0]. A lot of money buys a lot of science. Many of those great discoveries are not made by Americ

It’s simply because the US is the richest country on the planet[0]. A lot of money buys a lot of science. Many of those great discoveries are not made by Americans, if you look around at any of those American universities you’ll see people from all corners of the world. So yes, the US is quite good at research, but it’s not due to some intrinsic quality of the country any more than a billionaire’s ability to attract beautiful women is down to their good looks. The US is simply punching at its (very heavy) weight. [0] Why is the US the richest country? It has a lot of arable land to support a large population. Most of the original settlers came from the previous richest country, and it was never colonized (or more precisely it was never decolonized) meaning that the wealth was not diverted away from the people like it was in most of the worlds countries. The real story here is how China has completely mismanaged all the opportunities it’s had, you can thank Mao for that.