44 ms·
How the U.S. became a science superpower
- b_emery 1y agoIf you read nothing else in this excellent post, read the conclusion: > A key component of this U.S. research ecosystem was the genius of the indirect cost reimbursement system. Not only did the U.S. fund researchers in universities by paying the cost of their salaries, the U.S. gave universities money for the researchers facilities and administration. This was the secret sauce that allowed U.S. universities to build world-class labs for cutting-edge research that were the envy of the world. Scientists flocked to the U.S. causing other countries to complain of a “brain drain.” and: > Today, China’s leadership has spent the last three decades investing heavily to surpass the U.S. in science and technology. In my field (a type of radar related research) in which I've worked for almost 30 yrs, papers from China have gone from sparse and poorly done imitations of western papers (~15-20 yrs ago), to innovative must reads if you want to stay on top of the field. Usually when I think of a new idea, it has already been done by some Chinese researcher. The Biden administration seemed to recognize this issue and put a lot of money toward this field. All that money and more is going away. I'm hoping to stay funded through the midterms on other projects (and that there are midterms), and hoping that the US can get back on track (the one that actually made it 'great', at least by the metrics in the post.
- rayiner 1y ago[flagged]
- arunabha 1y agoThe GP post explicitly mentioned the growth of Chinese research capability that they directly saw. It's no secret that China has explicitly and deliberately invested in ramping up R&D. Also, requiring absolute proof in a system as vast and complex as R&D at the scale of the US leads to complete paralysis. It's a bit like cutting off your fingers because you want to lose weight.
- pjc50 1y agoIt would be interesting to see some discussion of how the Chinese research funding system actually works.
- renewiltord 1y agoThat makes the opposite point since Chinese indirect costs are 5-25%. e.g. this grant is at 25% https://www.nsfc.gov.cn/publish/portal0/tab434/info94303.htm https://www.nsfc.gov.cn/publish/portal0/tab434/info94303.htm
- nxobject 1y agoWhat “outcome” would meet your standards for justifiable research spending? Is a 26% cap on the percentage that indirects can go to all administration - all staff apart from researcher hours directly dedicated to the project - a sufficient “outcome”?
- rayiner 1y agoI’m talking about the part where he talks about the government funding indirects specifically, not the research funding in general. > A key component of this U.S. research ecosystem was the genius of the indirect cost reimbursement system
- natebc 1y agoWithout the university infrastructure around these Labs they'd EACH have to each employ their own construction, maintenance, housekeeping, legal, bookkeeping, HR, IT, compliance (and more) staff. There will still be some research done if the cuts to the indirects survive the courts but it will be drastically reduced in scope as the labs staff will have to cover any functions no longer provided by the host university. And you probably know this but this money isn't getting stuffed in to university presidents pockets or anything. It's paying (some) of the salaries of ordinary people working at jobs that pay about 20% (or more) less than they'd make in the private sector.
- Fomite 1y agoThings indirect cost reimbursements fund at my institution: - The research animal facilities - HPC staff, upgrades, etc. - Our BSL-3 facilities (the only ones for a long way) - Various and sundry research cores - New faculty startup funds Those are all pretty tightly correlated with success, and very difficult to support via single grants.
- bilbo0s 1y agoI don't know that I'd rely too heavily on midterms in 26. Gerrymandering and all that.
- sirbutters 1y agoI don't know why this is getting shadowed. You're absolutely right. Gerrymandering is a threat.
- Redoubts 1y agoIllinois and Maryland look pretty secure on that front. Perhaps the Democrats can try to gerrymander NYS again, without getting slapped down by the courts
- r00fus 1y agoGerrymandering? More like scrubbing the voters of the right to vote (SAVE act) or voter intimidation (all those militias standing ready!)
- fallingknife 1y agoI don't see any reason why specifically "indirect cost reimbursement" is anything to do with this. Sure, individually billing labs is administrative burden, but it's a tiny drop in the ocean of inane bureaucracy that university researchers already have to deal with today. And maybe if we got rid of the blanket overhead percentage, it would put pressure on universities to cut a lot of the crap. Researchers are much more likely to push back when they see a line item for how much that nonsensical bureaucracy is costing them.
- Tadpole9181 1y agoThis is a fundamental misunderstanding of research funding, and quite frankly repeating it without even basic research borders on negligence. Universities use indirect funds for maintaining facilities, the shared equipment, bulk purchases of materials, staff for things like cleaning and disposal. It is pivotal that these funds are available in the right amount or research physically cannot happen despite being "indirect" (due merely to the legal definition of the word). And these rates are aggressively negotiated beforehand. Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to happen is absurd. If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations. If you want to stop the science, you gut the financial viability of research.
- fallingknife 1y agoI do not believe that sharing costs of facilities and equipment is so difficult that research universities can't handle it while every condo association in the US somehow manages to pull it off. I do not believe you that this is aggressively negotiated down by the government because private research grants come with much lower indirect costs percentages. > Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to happen is absurd. Well I guess we just have to pay for endlessly expanding bureaucracy then, because apparently expecting research universities to be somewhat efficient with their resources is "absurd." > If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations. Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend on overhead. Oh, wait...
- csa 1y ago> papers from China have gone from sparse and poorly done imitations of western papers (~15-20 yrs ago), to innovative must reads if you want to stay on top of the field. Usually when I think of a new idea, it has already been done by some Chinese researcher. Not germane to the main thread, but are the “new idea” papers written by Chinese authors mostly published in English, Chinese, or both? If Chinese is part or all of the output, what method do non-Chinese reading researchers use to access the contents (e.g., AI translations, abstract journals, etc.)? As a language nerd, I’m curious. I know that French, German, and Russian used to be (and sometimes still are) required languages for some graduate students so that they could access research texts in the original language. I wonder if that’s happening with Chinese now.
- blululu 1y agoIn my experience Chinese academics are far more bilingual than western ones. I think that for Chinese academics the English publications are generally of a higher quality and more prestigious, but I’m sure that too will change over time. I can definitely say that Chinese publications have gotten much better in terms of quality over the last 20 years and there are now a lot of results worth translating. At this point ML translation is sufficiently good that it does not make a material difference for the readership. This means that there is not a lot of political advantage around having a more dominant language. The bigger point is about the relative strength of the underlying research communities and this is definitely moving in favor of the Chinese.
- xeonmc 1y agoChinese language publications may eventually serve the role of rapid communications, but for important results it will always be in English due to their ”trophy culture”.
- blululu 1y agoThat makes sense. The same trend is already happening in the west with Arxiv and Bioarxiv. Neither is as prestigious for the purpose of a lot of facility politics/rankings but in an active field both are more meaningful markers of the cutting edge than prestige publications like nature. I imagine these journals will retain their function as markers of prestige even as most of the community’s research output happens in more informal channels.
- 1auralynn 1y agoWe are killing the golden goose
- mistrial9 1y agodunno if it is this plain.. the regulatory capture in the last 30 years is not null. Especially in very niche, very profitable sub-corners of big-S Science.
- bilbo0s 1y agoA reminder that in a democracy, it's probably best to make sure the gold is widely shared. Lest the poorly educated masses of people without access to the gold vote to kill the goose.
- fifilura 1y agoImpossible since that would mean extreme left wing radical socialism. And communism.
- bilbo0s 1y agoSigh. Unfortunately, your implications are spot on. We, the people, are our own worst enemies.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoYou have to attribute some blame to the elite who run an ongoing propaganda campaign for voters to work against their own interests.
- apercu 1y agoReally? Is that your honest take? It's either late stage unfettered capitalism, regulatory capture and oligarchy OR communism? Edit: I forgot theocracy.
- fifilura 1y ago
- xhkkffbf 1y agoHow? Money. There is one problem with the current US system: it overproduces talent. When the US system was growing rapidly, the people could build a long-term career in the US. But nothing can grow forever at an exponential pace. The US continues to pour plenty of money into STEM, but it can't keep up with the pace of grad student production. People are making smart, individual decisions to head overseas for work. Places like China are rewarding them.
- anon291 1y ago> People are making smart, individual decisions to head overseas for work. Places like China are rewarding them. Wait what? I know that many Chinese students are staying in China, but this is the first I've heard of a substantial demographic immigrating to China to work there, esp from the US. Do you have data?
- insane_dreamer 1y agoIt's not widespread. But China has made an effort to offer obscene amounts of money to attract smart professors and researchers to switch to Chinese universities as they've tried to build up their top-tier beyond Beida and Tsinghua.
- nextos 1y agoOne annecdata. When I handed in my doctoral thesis in Oxbridge, I was contacted by a recruiter from PRC that offered me generous startup funds ($600k-1M) and salary to bootstrap my own academic lab at Tsinghua, Fudan, or other top universities. It'd take me 4-6 years to get an equivalent offer in UK or EU where experience and connections are much more important than talent. I am European and I do basic research in science. They seem to be very interested in fundamental science and investing heavily in lots of subfields. As discussed in other comments, the improvement in their research quality during the last decade is nothing short of impressive.
- anon291 1y agoInteresting
- lvl155 1y agoGonna state the obvious: freedom and peace. People mention money but money followed technological boom. And, yes, peace derived from military.
- pphysch 1y agoYou might clarify "domestic peace". America has been one of the most secure nations in history from large-scale domestic invasion (it's essentially never happened: Pearl Harbor, isolated terrorist attacks, and "open borders" don't come close). That said, it has virtually always been actively involved in foreign conflicts and shadow wars during its 250 year history. And yes, it's domestic security that enables long-term investment in science.
- lvl155 1y agoI would clarify it as relative peace. People simply left other parts of the world to pursue their dreams. If Europe weren’t basically war torn every couple of decades all the way up to the end of WWII, America might not have made it this far. And that’s why I don’t believe China will ever be that great until they reject pseudo-communist regime.
- cs702 1y agoWorth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decentralized, collaborative ecosystem, one that tightly integrated massive government funding of universities for research and prototypes while private industry built the solutions in volume. > A key component of this U.S. research ecosystem was the genius of the indirect cost reimbursement system. Not only did the U.S. fund researchers in universities by paying the cost of their salaries, the U.S. gave universities money for the researchers facilities and administration. This was the secret sauce that allowed U.S. universities to build world-class labs for cutting-edge research that were the envy of the world. Scientists flocked to the U.S. causing other countries to complain of a “brain drain.” > Today, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to technology startups and existing companies. Collectively, they spin out over 1,100 science-based startups each year, which lead to countless products and tens of thousands of new jobs. This university/government ecosystem became the blueprint for modern innovation ecosystems for other countries. The author's most important point is at the very end of the OP: > In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over.
- duxup 1y agoIt seems like for all the silliness and inefficiency that comes with a decentralized system ... the decentralized nature of US science research allowed for more "possibilities" and that paid off economically in spades. Like speech, ideas require an open field with a lot of garbage to hit many home runs.
- Nevermark 1y agoI expect every serious/successful researcher, artist, or other creative problem solver would agree that even within the ultimate centralization of work, all in one person, a low bar for exploration of ideas and potential solutions is helpful. The problem terrain insights generated by many "failures" are what make resolving interesting trivial, silly and unlikely questions so helpful. They generate novel knowledge and new ways of thinking about things. They often point the way to useful but previously not envisioned work. Edison and the long line of "failed" lightbulbs is a cliche, but still rich wisdom. But 1000 Edisons working on 1000 highly different "light bulb" problems, sharing the seemingly random insights they each learn along the way, are going to make even faster progress -- often not in anticipated directions.
- Arubis 1y agoBeing the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.
- apercu 1y agoAbsolutely, but what did that give the United States, a 10-year advantage? Last time I checked, WWII ended 80 years ago.
- bee_rider 1y agoIt kicked off a feedback loop. The best scientists and engineers wanted to work on the projects that were 10 years ahead. As a result US companies were at the forefront of new technology and developments… attracting the next generation of the best scientists and engineers. This was quite robust until <group that disagrees with my political opinions> screwed it up for ideological reasons (fortunately, I guess, I can say this in a non-partisan manner because everybody thinks the other side blew it. My side is correct, though, of course).
- laughingcurve 1y agoSchrödinger's politics
- bee_rider 1y agoThe hope is that the ambiguity will lead people to think about their general principles. If they agree or disagree strongly depending on how the variable is resolved, what does that say?
- yabitts 1y ago[dead]
- mixermachine 1y agoScience and progress are not a one off thing. The scientist are not used up after 10 years. They keep working and keep the advantages going. The advantage attracts even more intelligent people from every corner of the world.
- dboreham 1y agoToo many smart people doing smart stuff. Got to destroy that! Victory to the Idiocracy.
- zelphirkalt 1y agoSoon we might need a summary of how they managed to fall from grace and others slowly surpassed them.
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- renewiltord 1y agoIt’s stated as fact but what’s the causative link for indirect cost administration being the key? If those costs were made direct by university labs having to compete with commercial labs by requiring researchers to explicitly rent facilities why would that break things? About the only argument I can see is transaction costs. And those are a factor but that incentivizes university labs because they have facilities for teaching as well so they can bring transaction costs low.
- ecshafer 1y agoThere are a couple fundamental flaws here: One is that the number one Science and Engineering powerhouse prior to WWII was Germany, not Britain. Two this totally neglects that the US received the lion's share of Scientists and Mathematicians from countries like Germany, Hungary, Poland etc with the encroachment of the Soviets and persecution of the Jewish people. While the down up approach of the US and heavy funding probably helped a lot. Bringing in the Von Neumanns and Erdos of the world couldn't have hurt.
- yabitts 1y ago[dead]
- reubenswartz 1y agoUnfortunately, the German example is quite relevant these days. We seem intent on destroying the leading system of research universities in the world... ;-(
- bamboozled 1y agoSmart people are annoying and told us to wear masks though ?
- marcosdumay 1y agoYep, some of the first things Hitler did when he took power was to reverse the ridiculous large brain drain from most of the world into Germany, and stall most research by the chilling effect of censoring random topics and fighting institutions that harbored people he didn't like.
- blululu 1y agoPrior to WWII the United States was the world's leading power in terms of Science, Engineering and Industry - not Germany or the British Empire. The reason that Central European scientists fled to America (and not Britain) is because the United States had the scientific, engineering and industrial base to absorb them. Consider some of the major scientific breakthroughs to come out of the US leading up to and coming out of the war: Nylon, Teflon, Synthetic Rubber, Penicillin, Solid State Transistors, Microwave Communication, Information Theory, a Vaccine for Polio... These all would have happened with or without the war and the migration of German scientists (though adding John von Neumann to the mix probably helped move things along).
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoRelated from same author earlier: How the United States became a science superpower — and how quickly it could crumble https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687118
- gigatexal 1y agoAnd how the Trump admin is ruining it in very little time.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zusammen 1y ago“Indirect costs” were accepted on the theory that this would be used to create job security for professors who did useful work but were not able to secure direct funding. Spoiler alert: That job security doesn’t exist anymore. A professor who isn’t winning grants, even if tenured, is functionally dead. Research doesn’t matter except as PR and teaching definitely doesn’t matter; the ability to raise grants is the singular determinant of an academic’s career. Consequently, most academics despise university overhead because it reduces the number of grants to go around and they get nothing for it. That does not, of course, mean they support Trump or Musk. Most do not.
- Fomite 1y ago> “Indirect costs” were accepted on the theory that this would be used to create job security for professors who did useful work but were not able to secure direct funding. This is an argument that I have literally never heard, despite being in academia a long time.
- hintymad 1y ago> Britain remained a leader in theoretical science and defense technology, but its socialist government economic policies led to its failure to commercialize wartime innovations. And the detriment of UK's auto industry, manufacturing industry, and etc. I really don't understand how people still fancy state-controlled economy.
- anonymousDan 1y agoSorry but this is such a shallow comment. In what way is the US government directing public funding to academic institutions not state control? It's just a different organisational framework that appears to have been more successful.
- blululu 1y ago>> Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years. Citation needed. The United States has been a scientific powerhouse for most of its history. On the eve of WWII the United States was the largest producer of automobiles, airplanes and railway trains on earth. It had largest telegraph system, the largest phone system, the most Radio/TV/Movie production & distribution or any country. It had the highest electricity generation. The largest petroleum production/refining capacity. The list goes on. This lead in production was driven by local innovations. Petroleum, electricity, telephones, automobiles and airplanes were all first pioneered in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We can debate the causes of this but saying that the United States was a 2nd tier power behind the British or the Germans is demonstrably false.
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoAnd now come back with per capita numbers.
- blululu 1y agoA simple Google search would reveal: GDP: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp... GPD Per Capita: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334256/wwii-pre-war-gdp-per-capita-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334256/wwii-pre-war-gdp... US: 6134 UK: 5983 GER: 5544 The US would be even higher were it not for the South bringing down the average. Not really a surprise: America has always been a highly educated and highly skilled country.
- stavros 1y agoWouldn't everyone always be even higher if not for the low parts bringing down the average? That part of the comment sounds so biased that it makes me mistrust the rest of it.
- jhbadger 1y ago
- casey2 1y agoRight from the first paragraph I know this is just nonsense that is only being posted because of currentpoliticalthing The US leapfroged the rest of the world in both science and engineering by it's civil war, this isn't disputable. It could only do that because of decade long tariffs that existed solely to protect it's nascent manufacturing industry. People have constructed so many myths about WW2 it's crazy. GDP: 1871 the US passes GB By 1900 the US economy was double GB's size. by 1910 they've already passed them by GDP per capita. INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT: Again 1870s. You can't really untie science from industrial output. Is there argument here that the US was behind scientifically because of Nobel prizes? If you narrowly define science as "things europeans liked to research" then I guess. But even by that definition Americans were discovering new drugs such as Actinomycin D as early as 1940, during, not after, WW2 and before they entered. So unless people like Waksman (educated in America) count as braindrain 30 years before the fact I don't think the argument is credible. The UK failed to mass produce penicillin. It's this industrial ineptitude that caused "brain drain".
- blululu 1y agoWas it tarrifs or just a large, highly educated population with a unified market? The US has always been one of the leaders in education and scientific research on a per capita basis. Even in the 1770s you har people like Franklin working on cutting edge physics (the standard sign convention for charge is still flipped because of him). At some point it also just outgrew all the other countries in terms of size and it naturally became the global leader around that time.
- DrNosferatu 1y agoTime for the EU to take the place of the US.
- Gigachad 1y agoChina is probably more likely to take over in science.
- DrNosferatu 1y agoNot if the EU creates the conditions to attract the scientific talent wanting to leave the US.
- est 1y agoEU slaps regulations
- sgt 1y agoEU has a terrible track record. It's a gigantic bureaucratic papermill. They never promoted innovation, why would they start now? They'll probably talk about starting to promote innovation. They kind of have to. But it's a paradigm shift.
- marcosdumay 1y ago> EU has a terrible track record. In a context where the comparison is China... I say, let a thousand flowers bloom!
- DrNosferatu 1y agoDon’t forget: quite many innovations (most?) that supported the Covid vaccines were developed in the EU.
- ijidak 1y ago> By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years Was this written in 2030? The war ended in 1945. Just a minor nit... It was jarring to see a statement of questionable accuracy in the opening paragraph.
- layer8 1y agoIf you read carefully, there is no strict implication that the 85 years of leading only begun after the end of the war. If it began 1940, the quoted sentence would still be correct.
- josefritzishere 1y agoNot for long.
- MarkusWandel 1y agoIt also didn't hurt that a certain European science superpower started purging academics based on ideology, said academics being more than welcome in the USA. Wait a minute...
- koakuma-chan 1y agoI'm pretty sure the US is currently pushing for merit-based admission.
- lawn 1y agoI'm pretty sure you need to start looking at what they're doing (selecting for obedience over competence) than what they're saying (DEI is the root of all problems).
- asacrowflies 1y agoYou'd have to be a fool to believe that.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoRead third bullet point https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
- darig 1y ago[dead]
- doener 1y ago[flagged]
- killjoywashere 1y agoI've met Steve on a number of occasions, smart guy. I also work in this space and have definitely read a lot of the same books he has, along with many of his excellent articles. Alas, I'm pretty sure he would never read my articles, unless he got cancer, which I hope he doesn't. I do want to pick up where he left off: the interface between the US and China, and specifically look at how China has invested. I've spent some effort on this forum making the point that our system has left some critical vulnerabilities that the Chinese have leveraged, e.g. (1,2). It's worth understanding that Xi Jinping has been working hard on this problem set, along with his predecessors and many around him for a long time. To really understand his whole-of-economy approach, I highly recommend Hank Paulson's Dealing with China (3). He has and maintains a narrative of literally going from a boy in a cave to the leader of the largest nation on Earth. Much like the narrative arc Churchill maintained for himself (the Prof Blank mentions), Xi would see science as a component of the tapestry, but not the whole story. Xi is also using the Belt and Road Initiative for massive effect, see the maps in (4). The US has started to pay attention with renewed investments in the region, e.g. (5) but Xi has a decade head start and a political base that could be characterized as relatively stable compared to the current US administration. As my time is limited, I'm appending a reading list at the end for those interested (6 to end). Suffice to say, yes this is how we became a science superpower. But it ignores how our parochial incentives and belief in American exceptionalism morphed in the American narcissism (14) this is very likely to doom the American experiment without significant effort on the part of the American population to come together. Unfortunately, I fear the fracturing of the population is too far gone to remediate without major conflict, but major conflict in the present setting is likely far more serious than we could survive as a nation. As a final thought, the major conflict is obviously nuclear war. We will not survive that as a nation. Thus the Prisoner's Dilemma. We are all prisoners on Earth. Even Musk's species-level escape is far from escape. The physics of deep space travel or even intra-solar-system travel just don't work out in our favor. So, how do you survive the Prisoner's Dilemma? The math answer is "there are a lot of complicated answers" ref (15) but mainly, all parties need to work toward, and signal reliably that they are working toward, stable equilibrium. Being an unreliable partner must be met with brutality, even at the cost of everyone. (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655390 (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321493 (3) Hank Paulson, Dealing with China. We, and specifically, Goldman Sachs, and specifically Hank Paulson, taught Xi how to win. https://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic-Superpower/dp/1455504203 https://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic-Superp... (4) https://merics.org/en/tracker/how-bri-shaping-global-trade-and-what-expect-initiative-its-second-decade https://merics.org/en/tracker/how-bri-shaping-global-trade-a... (5) https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/us-revives-wwii-era-pacific-air-base-for-a-china-showdown/# https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/us-revives-wwii-era-pacific-ai... (6) Manchester. The Last Lion, the 3 volume definitive biography of Churchill, which puts the Prof's work in the largest possible context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Lion:_Winston_Spencer_Churchill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Lion:_Winston_Spencer... (7) Jamie Holmes. 12 Seconds of Silence, the definitive story of the proximity fuse, a significant portio of Merle Tuve's unique contributions to the war, and the story of the founding of Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory. https://www.amazon.com/Seconds-Silence-Inventors-Tinkerers-Superweapon/dp/1328460126 https://www.amazon.com/Seconds-Silence-Inventors-Tinkerers-S... (8) Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Note Merle Tuve also plays a critical role in this narrative, not bad for one of those 'second rate' government labs. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1451677618 https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/... (9) Rocco Casagrande and the work of Gryphon Scientific, alas (but probably net good) acquired by Deloitte. Wayback has some of their reports: https://web.archive.org/web/20240228103801/https://www.gryphonscientific.com/our-work/assessing-the-role-of-us-and-other-foreign-engagement-in-chinas-biotechnology-development/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240228103801/https://www.gryph... (10) Senior Colonel Ji-Wei Guo, and his theory of Merciful Conquest, audaciously published in the US's own Military Medicine journal https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19813351/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19813351/ see also https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/weaponizing-biotech-how-chinas-military-is-preparing-for-a-new-domain-of-warfare https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/weaponizing-bio... (11) Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Dictator's Handbook. This Berkeley professor uses innumerable real world examples to illustrate how dictators effectively control their populations https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po... (12) James C. Scott, Seeing like a State. UC Santa Cruz professor uses several extremely large examples the illustrate other ways governments control their resources. Spends a lot of time on the negative effects but certainly acknowledges the net upsides usually seem to outweigh the net downsides, but it would be good to learn how to avoid downsides when you can: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153 https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d... (13) Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs. Most interesting passage to me was the dinner with Obama where Jobs told Obama the manufacturing jobs are never coming back. https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537 https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648... (14) H.R. McMaster https://www.twincities.com/2020/10/16/h-r-mcmaster-u-s-foreign-policy-took-a-narcissistic-turn-after-the-cold-war-heres-how-to-set-things-right/ https://www.twincities.com/2020/10/16/h-r-mcmaster-u-s-forei... also https://www.amazon.com/Battlegrounds-Fight-Defend-Free-World/dp/0062899473 https://www.amazon.com/Battlegrounds-Fight-Defend-Free-World...
- chiefalchemist 1y agoA better title would be: "How this one time the U.S. became a science superpower". We all know the rule: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Two significant and obvious difference come to mind. I'm sure there are others. 1) WWII did major physical damage to Europe and Japan, to say nothing of the underlying economic damage (e.g., Britain's war debt handcuffed them). Sans any serious competition, of course the US excelled. 2) Along the same lines, the US then didn't have the trillions in debt the US has now. Many of the universities seeing their grants cut are well into the black. On the other hand, Uncle Sam is drenched red ink. I understand the value of investing. But given the financial fitness of the universities, it feels more like subsidies. Subsidies that aren't benefitting Sam a/o US taxpayers. Yes, Sam can continue to buy success, but at what cost?
- thfuran 1y ago>Subsidies that aren't benefitting Sam a/o US taxpayers Why do you think that?
- chiefalchemist 1y agoBecause if they did someone would have a list, and we would be told by our overseers. When a politician has a chance to pat themselves on the back and prove their value to their voters, they do it. They don’t miss a trick. When that doesn’t happen, that’s a tell.
- metrognome 1y agoI'm surprised that there's been no mention of Operation Paperclip, neither in the article nor in the comments here. Seems like a huge part of the story to leave out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
- mberning 1y agoHard to overstate how much effort the US put into collecting all the best scientists in the post WWII world.
- sinuhe69 1y agoYes, including surrounded and forcibly brought them into US camps. But yeah, the Soviets did the same and we had the nuclear bomb race, the space race and the Cold War.
- hliyan 1y agoThis is the first thing that struck me. Dangerous to weave narratives where large scale phenomena are elegantly explained by a single cause. It's always a confluence of multiple factors: influx of Nazi scientists, the policy mentioned in the article, the fact that Europe was recovering from a war, and perhaps others we're failing to notice. A favorite example of mine is the idea that World War 1 would not have happened if only Duke Ferdinand's driver had been told of the route change during the Sarajevo visit.
- jdthedisciple 1y agoHaven't read the article yet but Imma guess Operation Paperclip has a lot to do with it.
- switch007 1y agoI feel most people have absolutely no idea that the US had its very large boot in the UK's face with our face in the mud for much of the post WW2 period, and still has. We had to dance exactly to their tune. It annoys me no end to read so many comments to the effect of "why didn't they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?". Not that I'm saying there were not any economic failures by various British governments over the years. Honestly, so many Americans have no idea about their country's foreign policy. I guess you have to be on the receiving end of their short stick to understand
- ajb 1y agoI'm glad to see this article because this topic is very much worth thinking about right now - by both sides of the Atlantic :-). But history is more difficult to do well than this. A lot of this article just assumes its conclusions. You need more than 'this is a difference and therefore it was causative', especially if it happens to align with current conventional beliefs.
- amadeuspagel 1y agoWasn't it obvious that the US, the richest country on earth, would become the science superpower? How could it have been different?
- jimnotgym 1y agoIt is worth noting that the the majority of money that Britain spent on war material went to the US. That might be one reason the US could continue spending and the UK couldn't!
- misiek08 1y ago[flagged]
- ar_lan 1y ago> It’s not superpower, because it’s not the local people who are so smart. It’s only small percentile of imported skills. This is the entire basis of the US, excluding Native Americans. I'm first-gen American, have only ever lived here and wholly identify as an American. My story is super common here - and its not that many generations back that most Americans were European/African/Asian as a whole. So I don't exactly understand what you mean - the power did consolidate here with the mixture of many brilliant minds across the globe, and largely has remained until a recent President has decimated our reputation.
- lawrenceyan 1y agoI mean definitely props to the university system we have today in the US, but the UK was also bombed the fuck out after WWII. It's hard to really compare the two.
- geenkeuse 1y ago[dead]