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Carolyn Kaster / AP
President Barack Obama mixes it up with a group of seventh-grade students who are Intel Science Talent Search finalists during a visit to Intel's headquarters in Oregon on Feb. 18.
One month after President Barack Obama urged America to rise up and respond to a "Sputnik moment" in international high-tech competition, there are rising worries that the trend line for civilian research and development spending is going down rather than up.
The most worrisome development came last Friday, when the House approved a spending plan for the rest of the current fiscal year that would make deep cuts in spending for science and tech programs. The budget for the Energy Department's Office of Science, for example, would be cut by 18 percent. Ned Sauthoff, head of the U.S. ITER fusion research program, said such a reduction really translates into a roughly 30 percent cut, because a whole year's worth of spending reductions would have to be spread over about seven months.
If the House's budget become law, that could mean the shutdown of all the particle accelerators at federal labs, as well as a premature end to dozens of experiments in next-generation biofuels, batteries and nuclear reactors.
Biomedical research would take a hit as well — which carries a particularly deep sting for geneticist Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as co-chair of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. He believes the 21st century will be "the century of biomedical research," and worries that the United States could lose its lead in the field to other countries.
"This is a scary moment," he said this week at a Harvard seminar to mark the 10th anniversary of the decoding of the human genome. "Far more scary than some satellite going around beeping."
Vicki Sato, a veteran of the pharmaceutical industry who is now a professor at Harvard Business School, said the current revolution in biomedicine had "much more daunting" consequences than 1957's Sputnik moment. "If we fail at it, the health consequences, the economic consequences, the competitiveness consequences will be significant — in some ways, more significant than losing the race for space."
Lander said Obama's reference to Sputnik was meant to call attention to the current budgetary tug of war. Cutting the deficit without properly investing in future innovation would result in a "Pyrrhic victory," he said. "We will end up with a balanced budget and a second-rate nation."
White House science adviser John Holdren said something similar during last weekend's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. "Everybody is looking at China and saying, if we don't lift our game, China is going to eat our lunch economically," he told reporters, "because the amount they are investing in science, technology and innovation, while it has not yet reached anything like our level, is rising very quickly."
You might expect people like Lander and Holdren to say those sorts of things, considering that they're Obama's top counselors on scientific issues. But how about physicist Ray Orbach, who served as the Department of Energy's under secretary for science under President George W. Bush? In an editorial written for the journal Science, Orbach said he watched the House approve its budget bill "with a mixture of astonishment and dismay."
"Other countries, such as China and India, are increasing their funding of scientific research because they understand its critical role in spurring technological advances and other innovations," he wrote. "If the United States is to compete in the global economy, it too must continue to invest in research programs."
Orbach, who is now the director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, said it was vitally important for the Senate to restore funding for science in the current fiscal year. "Failure to do so would relegate the United States to second-class status in the scientific community and threaten economic growth and prosperity for future generations of Americans," he wrote.
One way or the other, this phase of the budget battle will reach a climax next week, when the current legislation that governs federal spending expires. There's already talk of a costly government shutdown if the GOP-controlled House, the Democrat-controlled Senate and the White House can't reach a deal by March 4. Maybe they should just bring in a few engineers to straighten out this silly budget mess.
What do you think? Register your opinion in the mini-poll above (unscientific, of course) and expand upon your view in the comment space below.
More about politics and science:
- Science shifting in a 'Sputnik moment'
- White House issues scientific integrity memo
- How political shifts will spin science as well
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."
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I fear greatly for the scientific community of this country. We have beens slipping in math and science scores for a long time now, and viewed as fat, lazy, ignorant slobs as by the rest of the world. We are the only ones who can turn this around, and reclaim our former glory as an innovator of the world, and guess what, we can put people back to work doing it. Education, particularly in science and math, should be the top priority in terms of long term investment for congress, but sadly too many of those corporate prostitutes, and self servient slobs(and I use both terms very broadly when speaking of the legislative body of our government) would rather bicker and squable about tax breaks, religious views, and engage in political prostrating that actually working towards fixing this country.
THIS is an abomination. Shame on Congress for not doing the right thing. Enough with the entitlements and move into investing in the future...Those that spur innovation get rewarded, those that have a high degree of confidence reaching technology readiness level of 7 or higher get to move to front of the line and invested in heavily to spark new economies.
I quote the great Paul Anka when he said, "Don't make a f_ckin maniac outta me!"
:-)
government doesn't create anything...they do not invent anything...they do not build anything ...as well they shouldn't because that is not the mandate of government. Their job is to assure and insure that Americans have the ability to do those things themselves. The money that has been dumped into the failed public school agenda over the past 50 years is obscene and hasn't helped as you point out. Getting rid of bad teachers (which is nearly impossible with the union crime syndicates power) and the bad curriculum. In Wisconsin where "education" is being debated and the "we care about kids" crowd is spewing hate and vile rhetoric , white students are graduating at a rate around 82% and black students are graduating at a rate of about 48%. That would lead me to think that the teachers union isn't facilitating a fair slate and are guilty of promoting class warefare and playing the "caste game" keeping minorities right where they want them.
government is not the answer....
Please get a clue. The article is not about K-12 education. It's about investing in science and technology research. Lots of that research is funded by our government, and some by industry. Take out government funded research, and industry won't take up the slack - they are interested in looking 3 years down the road, whereas the government funded projects look 5, 10 or 20 years down the road. Government funded science and technology has made the United States a technology leader. Take it out, and we'll become a 2nd rate country.
It doesn't fit exactly with this issue, but Wisconsin's total graduation rate is far above the rest of the country, one of the highest. SAT scores from Wisconsin schools rank the 3rd highest in the nation. Graduation rates for minorities has actually slowly been on the rise well dropping most elsewhere. Graduation rates for Blacks is comparable to slightly higher than other Great Lakes States. You need to dig a bit deeper in the demographics to thoroughly analyze this but, they're still retty close to the national average. Considering that the Black population, (6.2%), is less than half the national average and the White population is 10% higher than the national average, their numbers are actually pretty good.
Statistics are a science. Spin, like your trying to do is an art form, and you're not very good at it. Leave it to the pros.
The government built the internet you are using to complain about the government not building anything, they built the roads you probably use to get to work everyday, they laid the foundation for the technology that puts satellites in space that lets you communicate effortless across the world, they did most of the initial research into technologies that you use everyday like microwave ovens, and they funded the development of most of the vaccinations that keep your kids healthy.
Things that took many years, if not decades, to see a return on that investment. Expensive things that no private corporation would take the risk on. Things that have greatly improved your quality of life.
But yeah, government doesn't build anything.
Thanks Michael
Taking on the myth of 'government' is the problem morons one by one but they can't easily see the light.
We should let the people who hate government post signs in their homes so police fire departments don't need to attend their problems. They don't like them and they wont do a good job.
However they do like the military should we tell them they are a part of the government too.
America is screwed and it seem to just get worse every day, look up fascism. It is when the state and business control every thing to the benefit of the few at the expense of all. There already
Those who think that the government doesn't create seem to forget that it is often the government that backs the most far-reaching ideas, when the corporations won't, due to the need for more immediate returns on their investments. Today's jet airliners owe much of their existance to Boeing's work on the B-47s and B-52s. Our first communications satellites were paid for in large part by the government, as was the technology for the telephone itself. The inception of HDTV might have been stillborn but for government funding. In point of fact, one of the mandates given to the fledgling U.S. Air Force was technological and even medical research and development, much of which ended up benefiting the civilian world.
If today's GOP was in control in 1960, we wouldn't have put a man on the moon, wouldn't have invented the internet. Wouldn't have lead the world in science and innovation for that past 50 years. Conservatism is about protecting today's wealth for today's wealthy. It is not about creating wealth.
I didn't read any of that. Learn how to make point quickly from your own thoughts.
Sorry, Henry, but you lost me at isolationism. It does not work.
Henry,
Although I partially agree with some of what you wrote, and I tend to get a bit long winded myself, but man, that was just too intense.
You've got some good comments that would add to at least 20 different discussions if broken apart. But unfortunately, I couldn't see the one that applied to this discussion. You've got so much there that if 50,000 people actually read it, I'm reasonably certain that not one would completely agree with you.
Save some of that and re-use parts of it when it applies to the discussion. When you post a manifesto, people tend to think you may have some problems.
I'm not trying to criticize and frankly I'd rather read well thought out posts of several paragraphs or so in length, than a bunch of meaningless tweets. Just suggest that you try to keep the bulk of it at least close to the topic at hand.
@Henry Eckstein: How Xenophobic.
Henry Eckstein = Kim Chong Il
If I wanted to live in a xenophobic society I would have moved to North Korea...
How is North Korea's xenophobic chuche system working for them? Last I read, they were ripping grass out of the ground and boiling it for food...YUM...NOT.
:-/
Look up a little something called DARPA, then tell me the government has never made or done anything. You'll come across the very internet that you are using to say the government has never invented anything.
Well, it was a little confusing in his State of the Union Address when he spoke about our "Sputnik Moment" and then rattled off all the spending cuts and freezes. Expecting more for less is usually not a productive formula.
Well, you didn't listen too well. What cuts the President wanted and what the House just passed are two entirely different things. Republicans are looking for deep cuts in many places they shouldn't cut. I'm not thrilled with the President's cost cutting proposals either, however, there is logic behind them and they are consistent with his "Sputnik Moment" speech. He wants increases in some areas supporting that effort.
Frankly, Republicans don't have any interest in increasing funding anywhere and are just focused on keeping tax cuts for the wealthy by chopping anything that doesn't give them a direct return. The government spending cuts proposed by Republicans and Paul Ryan will cost close to 1 million government and associated jobs. This is a win/win from their view. It keeps pressure off of the tax cuts and it keeps unemployment high. Keep unemployment high and prevent any progress on the President's "Sputnik" vision and that puts Republicans in the driver seat for 2012. This isn't just stupid from the standpoint of advancement of the country, but it's also a political strategy to regain full control of all of Congress and the White House.
Theirs is a good business strategy longer term. Lower taxes on businesses and corporations and profits increase. Lower the living standard of the working class and you effectively lower wages and employment costs, and profits increase. Before you know it we're competitive with China from a business perspective. As doing business in the US starts looking comparable to China from a cost/profit perspective, and without any of the risks in operating in a foreign country, business will start to return to the US. Given a decade or so and business in America is flourishing again and all is well.
Please America, don't vote for short-sightedness.
Too late, we have the largest and greediest generation in the history of the US aging and looking for a place to die.
They by-and-large (by their votes) care little of investment and everything in tax-cuts, entitlements, subsidies and writeoffs.
Just wait, this is the tip of the iceburg. When the baby-boomers are all too old to continue to work 9-5 jobs, they will be flooding the polls voting in every politician that promises greater social security payouts and higher taxes on the working.
The X'ers and GenY will be the brunt of the attack when the Boomers are in the throws of death.
Right now, the economy is still too awful for the older-end of the Boomer generation to cash out and retire, particularly since the savings-rate among that age group is deplorable.
But eventually their resolve will fail them and they will have to retire, that's when the fit will hit the shan.
At least the Europeans aren't stupid enough to do that (and I'm American). I'll just get my ground breaking science news from our friends with brains in the E.U. The only push back the religious right has is the underfunding of scientific studies...lest the community find E.T. or a similar silver bullet...yes, I beleive this is ideologically motivated, not financially. Why else would anyone impede innovation?
The teabaggers regard education as "elitist". You betcha!
Thats why I always check Europe, Asian, Middle east and Indian sites before I check the 4th world nation of the United States for Scientific News.
How many Teapartiers do you guys really know? Although I am definitely not a Teapartier, I know quite a few; and they are strong supporters of high level education. Many of them have had kids that went to top tier schools. (Now are you going to complain about them being rich?-well, which is it, are they horrible b/c they they value good education or are they too rich b/c they send their kids to good schools to get it? Many of their kids get scholarships anyway.) I don't know a single Teapartier, in fact, who is not well-educated. Now that's among the people I know.
I think a lot of our problem as a country is that we keep handing away our technology and develpment on a silver platter as we move so many hi tech jobs overseas. I have first hand experience at this, as my family personally lost a job to Asia. This was one of a group of high-performing development positions that were taken from an award-winning group of outstanding Americans and turned over to a group of Asians who had much less experience and had never before worked together. I don't doubt that the Asians work very hard and are extremely brilliant; but, prior to their plant closing, the American team had been the top producing team in the company. They were literally designing and developing technology here in America that is now being designed and developed in Asia with the help of this American company. And it's the same story in company after company. How can that NOT affect our standing in technology? And what about almost all the pharma labs being outside the country and not American owned? That's TONS of science and research! But we are all told that Big Pharma is our huge ENEMY. Without Big Pharma, we would have no blood pressure meds, no cholesterol meds, no diabetes meds, no new antibiotics to fight the superbugs, no asthma meds, no cancer meds, and the list goes on. How many of you would be really sick or even dead without your enemy, Big Pharma-or if YOU aren't sick, what about your family members? I'll bet someone in your family you really care about has been saved by a medication or more than one. I do hate the fact that they advertise on TV, but get real about their being an enemy. How about disease being the enemy?
(BTW, if you are going to blame every sick person for all the conditions I listed, let me educate you a bit. Type I diabetes is NOT caused by diet and obesity as is Type II. Some hi blood pressure is genetic, as is some hi cholesterol-I knew of a guy who was vegan who had hi cholesterol-and this was real, not some rumor. Do you blame your lifestyle when you get an infection (assuming you take proper precautions)? Not all cancers can be easily explained by lifestyle, either-i e, why do some non-smokers get lung cancer? Besides, are you going to blame someone if they get it b/c their mom blew smoke in their face all the time when they were a kid?) Sorry, got a bit distracted by the soapbox. *getting off now*
that's a simple answer Douglas. If most people fall into a massive easily manipulated under-class the people on top have a larger portion of the pie. It's much easier to ignore people if they are uneducated, unsophisticated and live in poverty. It's much easier to exploit them and take what you want while slicing a swath of destruction as you go. It's much easier to frighten them into submission with mystical threats and syllogisms if they can't reason out the flaw.
Anything sound familiar here?
@ seen, every single thing you just mentioned is a TREATMENT for something. We don't find cures anymore...because there's less money in it. I live near Lancaster, Pa. I know all about the tea party libertarian corporatist views, and I personally(unfortunately) know a few tea baggers. Know your enemy right?
The biggest flaw that I've found with most libertarians and tea-partiers that I run into is that they think they have a firm grasp of economics and whole-heartedly buy into the lessez faire standard.
Corporations are made up of and led by people. People can be opportunistic and lawless if they are not subject to accountability. Therefore corporations can be just as opportunistic, if not moreso given their higher productivity potential compared to a single individual.
We need to police the markets, we need effective and low-corruption regulatory agencies to do it.
Lessez-faire market policy is tantamount to letting the fox control the henhouse!
Fraud and cheating is much more efficient of a business practice if you don't have to worry about lawsuits or criminal procedings eating into your profits! How do you think the DOJ catches wind of cheating in the first place, the profits of a business are unusually high given its size and nearest competition.
If we want to get this country back on track, we need to do a lot of thingsincluding the following
This would be a good start
Douglas, antibiotics don't cure bacterial infections? Really? Guess you didn't go to med school. And you know of a cure for cancer? Are you implying that no one is looking for one? That all they want to do is TREAT it? I've heard that position advanced before; but, as someone in the medical field, I call foul big time! Many say that docs dont want to cure their patients b/c they would lose that income. Wrong! They most certainly DO want to cure their patients. Even if they lost the income from those doctor visits, there are plenty of other patients. I don't know a single doc who is hurting for patients. Now with many more to be added to healthcare, they are worried about a shortage of docs. Also, you don't think whoever found a cure for cancer would make billions of dollars? There are numerous different types of cancer. That is potentially numerous different cures. Billions and billions of dollars. Treating would be small potatoes compared to the money in curing. People refuse treatment all the time, but who in their right mind would refuse a cure? If there are corporate people who feel the way you describe, they are very short-sighted; and they are not the actual lab people or the medical people who ARE, in fact, looking for cures.
Wow. We really are becomming a third world country. This is scary on so many levels. Even the communist countries realize the importance of funding science and technology.
It is high time this administration fired all Czars, and their staffs, get rid of the Union influence in the oval office (time to work on Domestic issues), Mr. Obama rely on his cabinet members to do their jobs (gee.....and even meet with them), take a "Sputnik Moment" to work with everyone in the Congressional Halls to balance the budget, start paying off our National Debt, and do an audit on ALL government agencies to deter Fraud, Waste, and Abuse (campaign promise).....then, and maybe then, funds could be made available for R & D. Until that happens, the can is just going to be kicked down the road with all the party posturing and bickering amongst themselves like school kids.
Well said ldo. Y'all have a check-book, right? Money in - money out, that sort of thing? Well, the banks are closed and your credit score is just a bit too low America...oh, sorry...we need payment in Yen! Thanks for investing in OUR future!
It's time for ALL members of government to act in the best interests of the United States of America, NOT for their own political party . . . or the party will be over.
It's frightening that these right wing lunatics talk about fixing our country for our children and grand children and then cut the very programs that will allow our children to compete in a global marketplace. In December test results of 15 year olds in industrialized nations the US finished 17th overall including 23rd in science and 31st in math. Behind China, Korea, Singapore, Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, Norway, Denmark, France, etc in all categories. Yeah, lets go after the teachers! They give tax breaks to corporations and billionaires while gutting education and R & D programs. The Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch and the corporations are hijacking the democratic system in this country to benefit the top 1% and to hell with the other 99%...with the Tea Party morons doing the dirty work. Any discussion of attacking the deficit must start and end with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and higher taxes. Anything else is just political posturing and will play right into China's hands. This is much bigger than a Sputnik moment, and with our government becoming "by the rich, for the rich", it's not a race we are going to win. Frightening.
There is no more hope for America. I should just kill myself right now rather than face the dark future ahead.
You seem to be on a killing spree, aren't you? if you have nothing better to contribute, get off this forum please.
You people are forgetting something here - even if we fund the research and make the discovery the production will be in China and the support will be in India. And whatever they can't do there, they will come here to do. America is anti-jobs and anti-inovation and has been for many years now because the government gives them tax breaks to send jobs over seas. Let's start with the basics - get the jobs back to take advantage of the innovation the government funds instead of funding innovation and discovery to help the treasuries of India and China.
Good thoughts John, repatriate the jobs or ad tariffs to counties who undermine American manufacturing.
I agree with your first point. All of our important innovations end up overseas at some point. I think that is a function of cultural influence more than anything else though. Americans have been innovators and inventors throughout our history. I would venture that the majority of the major innovative products of the last 100 years were created here first, or at least had their first commercial success -- manned flight, assembly line automobiles, PCs, internet, telephone, etc.
Americans are risk takers and as such have realized the economic gains that go with that. High risk, high reward -- establishing better margins as the first to market with a new viable technology than a later entrant. There is a lot of downside too, and everyone knows some would-be entrepreneur who went belly up.
The rest of the world, Asia in particular, are fast followers of new technologies. Their cultural bent is toward optimization of processes -- both in manufacturing and product improvement. It is a much lower risk position, and lower margins are generally seen with later to market products. However it is much safer position since the market has already been made by the entrepreneur.
America has a history of pushing innovation (with the help of Gov't money) and a lot of guts by individuals who a lot of times risk their personal finances or their company's future to pursue those innovations. We, as a people, are not good optimizers. It isn't who we are, nor who I think we should be. We invent and the rest of the world chases us. That is what is at stake. If we lose our ability to lead through innovation, we aren't going to win by optimizing. Unlike the rest of the world, American workers generally enjoy earning enough money to pay their bills and feed their families. In a race to make the cheapest products not only do we go against our natural inclination toward innovation, we create an environment that can't sustain our workforce.
Cutting R&D funding for long range technologies is a sure way to win the race to the bottom as a nation.
The question that should be asked of Congressional Republicans is: Are you inherently anti-science?
I think it's pretty clear the answer is "Yes."
That's a pretty sad comedown for the party that used to represent entrepreneurs who built new businesses based on science and technology.
One important reason that the US is losing is technological lead is that (a) American companies perform little to no basic research as it is not profitable in the short term and (b) most of the country's research dollars go to support third rate, un-peer reviewed "research" by the military and their bloated, inefficient suncontractors like NG. Don't ask about why it costs so much to produce so little or you're unpatriotic.
Here's what I suggest we do in California. Stop sending our billions of tax dollars to Washington to support the redneck Teabagger states (especially in the south and midwest who have been living off of CA and NY's tax dollars for decades) and the military-industiral complex. Use this money to support what we're best at - innovation and invention.
There is no future with a high standard of living outside of biotech, IT, manufacturing technology and basic science. Mitch McConnell and his ilk will never get it because he's an ignorant redneck misanthrope.
Hey fellow Americans: mull over this. The Beijing Genomics Institute just bought 128 high throughput DNA sequencing machines from Illumina. That's more sequencers than the rest of the world - in one institute. Guess who' gonna be making the next wave of discoveries in Genomics - not John Boehner and MItch McConnel.
Thaks a lot for ruining my children's future you rednecked a$$holes.
If you hate conservatives so much, then why don't you kill them?
Why doesnt the South try again to seceed? Please?
ROTFLMAO! I can't tell you how many times I've said this myself. Let 'em go!
Honestly could you be a bigger moron? The government never invented anything? Do the voices inside your head tell you to ignore reality or what? Try nuclear power or the microprocessor inside all electronic devices or maybe you could google spin offs from the space program like most medical scanning devices. How do you even function in life being borderline retarded?
While I can't pardon the retard, I do have a question: where are all those products being manufactured now?
Intel developed the first microprocessor for a Korean desk calculator company. Our government didn't have a thing to do with it except to grant an export license for the 4004. Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit. Stepping back a generation, Bell Labs developed the transistor. And it is not true that DuPont developed Teflon under contract to the space program. All of these products of corporate labs, not government.
Back when America was great and businesses paid taxes and supported research. They don't do research now as it will affect the shareholders return and the next quarters results. Foolhardy and America declines sadly.
At least as a third world country we aren't obligated to help anyone right? Really.... no energy policy.. no drilling.... cutting back on education (and we are already suffering there) and no growth. Shouldn't Brazil be sending US money???? Or Mexico???? We are dependent on RUSSIA for our space adventures now??? JFK is spinning in his grave...
We are a crumbling facade of a country and all this hope and change is killing us. And the media darlings, His and Her Highness Obummer are still flying around the country at will... snarfing down ribs and burgers while telling me to eat healthyand conserce while the media just raves over her "beautiful arms." Really?
Detect a little jealousy here? Sounds like the burgers and ribs gave you some inverse-popeye fat arms.
Education is a local matter, funded by property taxes. It is not a legitimate activity of the propaganda arm of the federal government.
...anyone else hungry all of a sudden?
We lost this one folks. Our “leadership” have no long term vision for our country. It has been a massive collection of short term pass the buck bull@!$%# that has resulted in only one group doing well, the rich. The funny thing or the sad thing is, they the rich and their political puppets have done a remarkable job of convincing you that your best interests are theirs. Lack of health care, privatize this and that, no social security, no unions, all of these things the rich do not need and see no need to pay for that in the end benefit us all.
As soon as a find a job abroad, I am out of here. There are so many better places to live than the USA, less crime, less violence, more social benefits and nets and most of all, better primary education with the people who will continue to take our jobs out of the USA. The country needs long term planning and vision and frankly, no one can see past the next election cycle.
Hence I heard today that it's time to start ramping up for the next federal election which isn't for almost 2 YEARS! So if you think that people have been dragging their feet for the last two years, get ready for even less getting done while everyone goes into re-election mode. Here in Canada a federal election takes about 2 months. The problem is we keep getting the same band of jokers and hucksters every time (read: Stephen Harper's conservative minority) At least I didn't vote for him.
Obama's Presidency has been a succession of "Dupnik moments".
Wee need to get Obama out of office while there still is an America ti worry about.
Lets be honest and not try to kid ourselves. There will not be a 'Sputnik Moment' in the U.S., maybe in China, but not in the U.S. The American economy is driven by consumers who buy stuff which accounts for over 70% of all economic activity in the U.S.; compared to China where over 70% of economic activity is from factories and innovation or Germany where 70+% is also from making stuff. The U.S. production is limited to a few big-ticket things like Boeing planes, auto makers, heavy equipment like Bobcat, and software (hardware is almost all made overseas). Lots of small innovative and inventive things will always be 'invented' in the U.S. but most will then be manufactured in China or India or Vietnam or other place with low wages.
Besides, if a real 'Sputnik Moment' happened in the U.S. like a cheap easy way to crack water into hydrogen for cheap energy or a new invention for simple fusion energy, then we all know it would be forbidden because it would immediately render all oil companies and other energy suppliers obsolete and bankrupt - so the government will never allow any kind of 'free' energy to replace oil and electric generators, NEVER! - - -but China would.
The big problem with R&D in this country is that it has become dependent on the government teat. It is all about grants and grantsmanship, and academic petty publish or perish. Prior to WWII, all R&D was funded by industry. The great corporate labs were the source of all of the great inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries. WWII saw the politicization of R&D. It became a bureaucracy, an empire building exercise for "scientists" with bureaucratic ambitions. The costs have skyrocketed while the useful results have plummeted, not unexpected with a government enterprise.
Do you recall how we embraced the "post-industrial" model of business, where manufacturing became passe, and we could just shuffle money around to make huge profits? I believe we are still in that mentality, and that is one reason why we do not value or cherish scientific and engineering education and talent. We need to reassess where we are headed as a nation - do we just buy and sell, and look for the lowest cost producer, or do we encourage and support American manufacturing and innovation? In the long run, technologically talented societies are the only ones that survive and prosper.
You might be right, on the other hand, the British Empire was primarily a mercantile empire. Winston Churchill fondly called the British a nation of shopkeepers. They bought and sold the world. Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution as well, of course. So being a Great Power isn't completely a one sided thing. But as important as power looms, steam engines, and iron making puddling furnaces were, as tool of Empire, the British East India Trading company merchants were more important.