> 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.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

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.

> 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.

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

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?

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.

How the United States became a science superpower — and how quickly it could crumble

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687118

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.

It's hard to really compare the two.

And the detriment of UK's auto industry, manufacturing industry, and etc. I really don't understand how people still fancy state-controlled economy.

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

(2) 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-Superp...

(4) https://merics.org/en/tracker/how-bri-shaping-global-trade-a...

(5) 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...

(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-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/...

(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.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/ see also 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-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/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/1451648...

(14) H.R. McMaster https://www.twincities.com/2020/10/16/h-r-mcmaster-u-s-forei... also https://www.amazon.com/Battlegrounds-Fight-Defend-Free-World...

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.

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".

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.