I don't think people have quite internalized *how* the US became the global leader in science and technology. It's partially a story of massive global talent migration.

And it's important to get this story right if we want to maintain

Around 1900, the US was a bit of a scientific backwater when compared to Europe. Most of the exciting work was being done in Germany and Austria, especially.

Then came three enormous waves of academic and scientific talent to the US.

1) First came a group of Jewish scientists fleeing persecution.

In a massive own-goal, 1930s Nazi Germany dismissed ~15% of the physicists who made up a stunning 64% (!) of their physics citations.

The group who fleed to the US included intellectual superstars like Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller who formed the backbone of the Manhattan Project.

In a pithy quote, Churchill’s military secretary Sir Ian Jacob is said to have remarked that the Allies won “because our German scientists were better than their German scientists.”