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The US Drops Out of the Top 10 In Innovation Ranking (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. dropped out of the top 10 in the 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index for the first time in the six years the gauge has been compiled. South Korea and Sweden retained their No. 1 and No. 2 rankings. The index scores countries using seven criteria, including research and development spending and concentration of high-tech public companies. The U.S. fell to 11th place from ninth mainly because of an eight-spot slump in the post-secondary, or tertiary, education-efficiency category, which includes the share of new science and engineering graduates in the labor force. Value-added manufacturing also declined. Improvement in the productivity score couldn't make up for the lost ground.
South Korea remained the global-innovation gold medalist for the fifth consecutive year. China moved up two spots to 19th, buoyed by its high proportion of new science and engineering graduates in the labor force and increasing number of patents by innovators such as Huawei Technologies Co. Japan, one of three Asian nations in the top 10, rose one slot to No. 6. France moved up to ninth from 11th, joining five other European economies in the top tier. Israel rounded out this group and was the only country to beat South Korea in the R&D category. South Africa and Iran moved back into the top 50; the last time both were included was 2014. Turkey was one of the biggest gainers, jumping four spots to 33rd because of improvements in tertiary efficiency, productivity and two other categories. The biggest losers were New Zealand and Ukraine, which each dropped four places. The productivity measure influenced New Zealand's shift, while Ukraine was hurt by a lower tertiary-efficiency ranking.
South Korea remained the global-innovation gold medalist for the fifth consecutive year. China moved up two spots to 19th, buoyed by its high proportion of new science and engineering graduates in the labor force and increasing number of patents by innovators such as Huawei Technologies Co. Japan, one of three Asian nations in the top 10, rose one slot to No. 6. France moved up to ninth from 11th, joining five other European economies in the top tier. Israel rounded out this group and was the only country to beat South Korea in the R&D category. South Africa and Iran moved back into the top 50; the last time both were included was 2014. Turkey was one of the biggest gainers, jumping four spots to 33rd because of improvements in tertiary efficiency, productivity and two other categories. The biggest losers were New Zealand and Ukraine, which each dropped four places. The productivity measure influenced New Zealand's shift, while Ukraine was hurt by a lower tertiary-efficiency ranking.
The best the US can do is 80s/90s era ICs. Modern ICs drive the high bandwidth of the modern Internet. Welcome.
Approximately 75% of Intel's semiconductor fabrication is performed in the USA.. That includes 14nm and 10nm foundries, with a 7nm foundry planned to open in the US as well.
GlobalFoundries has a presence in the US and is pushing out 60,000 wafers a month outside of Albany, NY with process at 14, 22 and 28 nm. (that's a lot, the largest in the world are pushing about 150,000 wafers/month)
Tower Semiconductor has US foundries, although it is not a US company, dealing with some more exotic ICs for mixed signal and high performance analog. They're frequently making special purpose ASICs for telecommunications, so there's your "high bandwidth Internet" right there.
Does the US manufacture the most ICs? No way, not by a long shot, the tiny Island nation of Taiwan has the big United States beat by an order of magnitude. But the US still operates cutting edge silicon foundries, so it's premature to say "The best the US can do is 80s/90s era ICs"
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's harder to name something innovative that DIDN'T start here than the reverse
Space travel - first man made object in space was the V2. Early space program in both US and USSR carried on from German rocketry, with German scientists
Quantum mechanics - Planck is usually considered to be first. Einstein is German born but a US citizen, then you've got Heisenberg and Born for Germany and Schrodinger from Austria. I'm not arguing Einstein's importance, nor his citizenship, but QM DIDN'T start in the US
Nuclear bombs - the US produced the first, but the ideas around fission go back to the 30s and both the USSR and Germany had independent and parallel programs. Not sure that it's innovation if others are doing it and you just beat them to production.
Tang - a powdered fruit drink? Powdered milk and instant coffee go back to the late 1800s. I'm not sure that Tang qualifies as innovative (unless there's more to it than I understand)
Of the other examples, some are weak (Commercial space flight is double counting, the innovative part is space flight, commercialising technology is ordinary), others are evolutionary (Google's search engine, the iPhone) which while still innovative are weakly so.
The clearest example you provide is the Internet. While other countries provided some of the early elements (UK and packet switching for eg), the overall concept, development and the majority of the work was all US.
Pretty much the only big tech company in Europe is Phillips, and arguably their most high tech product is LED lights
Philips also makes high-end medical devices: magnetic resonance scanners, tomographs, radiation therapy systems, and so on.
Circumcision is child abuse.
So you think throwing a dog into orbit to die counts as space travel and the US did no original or innovative work in this area?
The Russians were also the first to send a human into space.
You were saying...?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Space travel. The Internet. iPhones. Commercial space travel. Quantum mechanics. Nuclear bombs. Tang. Google.
Yes, the US used to do great things. But genetic engineering on humans? China only, due to regulations. Space travel? Well, the US government canceled all its programs, and buys space on other's launches. Some private work, but that's being duplicated by others elsewhere in the world, and the lead isn't clear, and the lead is by an immigrant from Africa. Nuclear Bombs. Nope. The US is not working on new nuclear bombs. Rather than decommissioning thousands and replacing them with hundreds, for cost savings while not decreasing strike capabilities, the US spends defense budgets on airplanes to replace old ones that do a better job than the new ones.
It's harder to name something innovative that DIDN'T start here than the reverse.
Well, since you are going back 50+ years, who made the first automobile?And your space travel example is insane. First man in space? First man in orbit? First satellite? First rocket? None of that was US. The US had the first man on the moon. Yay, one first out of hundreds. So let's pretend that's the only one that matters. How's that Space Shuttle program doing?
Learn to love Alaska
For every high tech company you can name overseas, the US has one that outclasses it in every way
So what company in the US outclasses ASML in every way? And Bosch? Or Toyota?
Pretty much the only big tech company in Europe is Phillips
If you choose to ignore ABB, Akzo Nobel, Alstom, Airbus, ASML, AstraZeneca, BAE, BASF, Bayer, BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Dassault, Dürr, Electrolux, Ericsson, Fiat, Fresenius, GlaxoSmithKline, Ineos, Infineon, KUKA, Leonardo, Mahle, Merck, Michelin, Nokia, Novartis, NXP, Osram, PSA, Renault, Rheinmetall, Roche, Rolls Royce, Safran, Sanofi, SAP, Schaeffler, SKF, Siemens, STMicroelectronics, Technicolor, ThyssenKrupp, Voestalpine, Voith, Volkswagen, Volvo, Wärtsilä, Zeiss, ZF and quite a few others, and drop a superfluous L in the name of Philips, sure. There are many, many more small ones too.