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As an American I sort of live in a bubble. I didn't realize the rest of the world views the US as a country that's falling apart until recently. This article so

As an American I sort of live in a bubble. I didn't realize the rest of the world views the US as a country that's falling apart until recently. This article solidifies what I've heard even further. With Airbus dominating the commercial aviation market, what is the US currently best at? Space, Defense, cinema and software?

graceevans 1y ago
[dead]
iancmceachern 1y ago
Medical devices
fakedang 1y ago
Pretty much all of the above. And drugs, although America's healthcare model is so well known it cancels that out. Tbf, the rest of the world also views Europe in the same boat (if not having taken an early-bird ticket on it).
jiggawatts 1y ago
Software, cloud, AI, financial services, movies, computer games, space (i.e.: Starlink), military technology, etc... There are entire categories of things where it is just the US doing the thing, OR without the US the thing would implode. For example, there are only two popular mobile phone operating systems: Android and iOS. Both are made by US companies (Google and Apple). Let me put it this way: If every undersea fibre link out of the Americas was suddenly severed, people in the USA might not even notice for a while. The rest of the planet would make a winding down noise as every second piece of hardware or software stopped dead because of some missing dependency.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > For example, there are only two popular mobile phone operating systems: Android and iOS. Both are made by US companies (Google and Apple). Not for long. https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_unveils_its_own_pc_os__harmonyos_pc-news-67711.php https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_unveils_its_own_pc_os__harmo...
  - MrDrMcCoy 1y ago
    There's also Sailfish OS and Tizen, which could become suitable replacements if investment and necessity arose.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  American Exceptionalism. From my neck of the woods, we've largely viewed the Americans as part of a security arrangement (Pacific) but, as a trading partner, they are far behind the Chinese (so much so that its a constant political discussion on how to balance the two competing alliances). This is largely what Trump was trying, and failing (miserably) to address with his tariffs, nobody buys from the US anymore. If the fibre was cut through the USA, then yes there would be a period of difficulty, but it would be very quickly replaced with other countries technology (keeping in mind that most Western governments were looking to move to Chinese Huawei telecommunications kit until the US made aspersions as to how secure peoples data/secrets would be if that happened, completely ignoring Snowden's revelations that the US had been engaged in using the hardware in overseas telecommunications systems for that exact purpose)
  - yesbabyyes 1y ago
    I thought Huawei's only competitors in telecommunications are European, though?
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      I'm not in the telco space anymore, but Motorola, Cisco, Alcatel Lucent (or whatever they are now) are all a mix aren't they, Euro/US
      - ojl 1y ago
        I think it’s Ericsson and Nokia (which bought Alcatel Lucent I think) that are the main competitors.
  - jiggawatts 1y ago
    Sure, that'll be easy! Just clone the repos from GitHub, wait... oh no. We'll just deploy it to AWS... wait... IAM is in US East 1 only. Dammit. Okay, fine, we can live without all of those JS CDN URLs, right? Where's NPM managed from again? Crates.io? NuGet? Uh-oh.
mrtksn 1y ago
IMHO USA is still the best in many of those things, it's just that its no longer uncontested. USA is going through the stage all the former European empires went through. You are even trying to do the nationalism thing which by itself means if you adopt it you will become a nation instead of an empire and instead of doing global stuff you will do what a nation of 340M people do. All those isolationist stuff, identity crisis etc. looks like post-imperial Europe to me. Sometimes I wonder if USA is trying to do soft-transition from being global superpower empire into a largish country like on of the others. I just can't see the mechanism where all that can be orchestrated, so maybe it's not orchestrated but because US have only 2 neighbors and they are well behaved the US empire isn't going down with a huge war but its just pulling back as it is contested.
- immibis 1y ago
  Is self-destruction a soft transition?
- cjblomqvist 1y ago
  The UK (empire) didn't go down in a big war (although they fought in several, that also threatened them). It seems wars are definitely not needed for the transition to a nation rather then empire. I'd say wars have historically been a part of all nations/geographical areas more or less continuously - and empires are more inclined to participate due to 1) being bigger and 2) thinking there's more to gain from those wars (usually due to capability/likelihood of winning).
  - mrtksn 1y ago
    Maybe being an island helps, maybe the WW1, WW2 and other conflicts were the process of downfall of the British empire I'm not too sure about it but after centuries of global European dominance Europe(including UK and the Turks) ended up transforming into something completely different than their glory days and its alright. Similarly, maybe the conflicts US was involved last 30+ were the wars that broke the empire? Personally, I'm looking forward to a world where our planet belongs to all of us and we are not limited by borders and not dying for the careers of politicians. IMHO the technology has advanced enough and the resource scarcity and most issues are artificial.
xiphias2 1y ago
Regarding defense while US is still ahead, DJI in itself is already far superior in manufacturing small drones, it's just that they are used in both sides of the wars, that's why there was not much focus on them so far.

graceevans 1y ago

[dead]

iancmceachern 1y ago

Medical devices

fakedang 1y ago

Pretty much all of the above. And drugs, although America's healthcare model is so well known it cancels that out. Tbf, the rest of the world also views Europe in the same boat (if not having taken an early-bird ticket on it).

jiggawatts 1y ago

Software, cloud, AI, financial services, movies, computer games, space (i.e.: Starlink), military technology, etc... There are entire categories of things where it is just the US doing the thing, OR without the US the thing would implode. For example, there are only two popular mobile phone operating systems: Android and iOS. Both are made by US companies (Google and Apple). Let me put it this way: If every undersea fibre link out of the Americas was suddenly severed, people in the USA might not even notice for a while. The rest of the planet would make a winding down noise as every second piece of hardware or software stopped dead because of some missing dependency.

wiseowise 1y ago
> For example, there are only two popular mobile phone operating systems: Android and iOS. Both are made by US companies (Google and Apple). Not for long. https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_unveils_its_own_pc_os__harmonyos_pc-news-67711.php https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_unveils_its_own_pc_os__harmo...
- MrDrMcCoy 1y ago
  There's also Sailfish OS and Tizen, which could become suitable replacements if investment and necessity arose.
awesome_dude 1y ago
American Exceptionalism. From my neck of the woods, we've largely viewed the Americans as part of a security arrangement (Pacific) but, as a trading partner, they are far behind the Chinese (so much so that its a constant political discussion on how to balance the two competing alliances). This is largely what Trump was trying, and failing (miserably) to address with his tariffs, nobody buys from the US anymore. If the fibre was cut through the USA, then yes there would be a period of difficulty, but it would be very quickly replaced with other countries technology (keeping in mind that most Western governments were looking to move to Chinese Huawei telecommunications kit until the US made aspersions as to how secure peoples data/secrets would be if that happened, completely ignoring Snowden's revelations that the US had been engaged in using the hardware in overseas telecommunications systems for that exact purpose)
- yesbabyyes 1y ago
  I thought Huawei's only competitors in telecommunications are European, though?
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    I'm not in the telco space anymore, but Motorola, Cisco, Alcatel Lucent (or whatever they are now) are all a mix aren't they, Euro/US
    - ojl 1y ago
      I think it’s Ericsson and Nokia (which bought Alcatel Lucent I think) that are the main competitors.
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  Sure, that'll be easy! Just clone the repos from GitHub, wait... oh no. We'll just deploy it to AWS... wait... IAM is in US East 1 only. Dammit. Okay, fine, we can live without all of those JS CDN URLs, right? Where's NPM managed from again? Crates.io? NuGet? Uh-oh.

mrtksn 1y ago

IMHO USA is still the best in many of those things, it's just that its no longer uncontested. USA is going through the stage all the former European empires went through. You are even trying to do the nationalism thing which by itself means if you adopt it you will become a nation instead of an empire and instead of doing global stuff you will do what a nation of 340M people do. All those isolationist stuff, identity crisis etc. looks like post-imperial Europe to me. Sometimes I wonder if USA is trying to do soft-transition from being global superpower empire into a largish country like on of the others. I just can't see the mechanism where all that can be orchestrated, so maybe it's not orchestrated but because US have only 2 neighbors and they are well behaved the US empire isn't going down with a huge war but its just pulling back as it is contested.

immibis 1y ago
Is self-destruction a soft transition?
cjblomqvist 1y ago
The UK (empire) didn't go down in a big war (although they fought in several, that also threatened them). It seems wars are definitely not needed for the transition to a nation rather then empire. I'd say wars have historically been a part of all nations/geographical areas more or less continuously - and empires are more inclined to participate due to 1) being bigger and 2) thinking there's more to gain from those wars (usually due to capability/likelihood of winning).
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Maybe being an island helps, maybe the WW1, WW2 and other conflicts were the process of downfall of the British empire I'm not too sure about it but after centuries of global European dominance Europe(including UK and the Turks) ended up transforming into something completely different than their glory days and its alright. Similarly, maybe the conflicts US was involved last 30+ were the wars that broke the empire? Personally, I'm looking forward to a world where our planet belongs to all of us and we are not limited by borders and not dying for the careers of politicians. IMHO the technology has advanced enough and the resource scarcity and most issues are artificial.

xiphias2 1y ago

Regarding defense while US is still ahead, DJI in itself is already far superior in manufacturing small drones, it's just that they are used in both sides of the wars, that's why there was not much focus on them so far.