The OP sees countries around the world and essentially all of current civilization as neglecting math and regards this situation as unfortunate. Mostly I don't

The OP sees countries around the world and essentially all of current civilization as neglecting math and regards this situation as unfortunate. Mostly I don't and for the following two reasons: (1) Learning Math? Whatever K-12 or four years of college do in math, it's quite possible to learn quite a lot of math. So, I see no big disaster here. That is, if someone wants to learn some math, they can go for it. E.g., there is an outline of how in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269324 Further, the Internet is just awash in materials for learning math, the best of which are just terrific. Further, there is no shortage of really good math expertise in at least the top two dozen or so US research universities. And there are engineering schools with programs in the mathematical sciences with optimization, probability, statistics, numerical analysis, and more. Some EE departments are deep into stochastic processes, signal processing, stochastic integration, and more. Since I did a lot of such learning, it's doable. (2) Math for the Economy? If some math has some economic value, then do a start up where the crucial core, secret sauce of the start up is the math. Right: As the OP makes clear, in principle and with some examples, and with more being possible, the founder of the start up can do the math, and millions of user/customers can make use of the results without being aware of the math at all. Since I'm trying to do just such a start up, maybe such is doable. For the role of math, don't see any biggie problems, for national security, economies, countries, or civilization. There are a lot of really good mathematicians. In part what's missing are their $40 million houses, 300 foot yachts, private Gulfstream jets, two dozen Ferraris, drop dead gorgeous trophy spouses, etc. So, right, there's James Simons. And Andrew Viterbi. But, we need many hundreds more. I'm working on it, and one thing the OP might do that would be more effective would be to show how he used math to get a 300 foot yacht, etc.