The US has become a world leader in suing curious people into submission. As soon as you touch any commercially available tech and do anything that the manufacturer dislikes, you're at risk, thanks to § 1201:
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Extending your digital camera with new firmware? Illegal.
Inventing a custom ink or add-on for your printer? Illegal.
Repairing a tractor? or a ventilator? Illegal.
How do you expect anyone to get world-leading science done in this environment?
These are bad things but I have a hard time seeing these as the reason why science is lagging.
Science is lagging in the US because the US has destroyed viable careers in science.
Who does the hard work to get PHd in a scientific field knowing that they'll be saddled with hundreds of thousands of jobs in debt and that there's a good chance that they'll have no employment opportunities after the fact. Especially with the recent destruction of the public sector in scientific jobs, it's probably the worst time ever to get a degree in a field of science.
People do not graduate with a STEM PhD with hundreds of thousands in debt; that is not how the education system works pretty much anywhere in the world.
Your PhD might not put you into hundreds of thousands of debt, but your undergrad very much might in the US. And then you'd have to choose to start a PhD while having hundreds of thousands in debt.
This is the truth. I would love to go back to school and do research to get my PhD. But going back to living on sub-minimum wage to work 80+ hours a week is just not something I can do at this stage of life.
I think some people overblow the lawsuit risk in the US. It really does suck here, however one of the benefits to certain types of innovation is that the US has a lot of IP protection infrastructure. Which stiffles innovation in a lot of ways, but also makes investment easier in some cases.
Momentum is a large part. I also do think there's somewhat of a motivation that once you've gotten to the top you can sue people who try to displace you into oblivion - ye olde classic "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" syndrome.
Legally risky research, but if it has high enough rewards will eventually end up in the hands of extremely large companies that have the legal backing to do anything they want.
They do, on paper, but many countries hardly enforce them. For example, the EU has more caveats to its section-1201-style insanity; China simply doesn't care at all. These copyright treaties are useless in practice and harmful because they ossify a bad system.
In fairness that sounds like extending capabilities of something that already exists. For personal use that should be okay. For commercial use, that would run afoul of IP -unless we’re talking about open source, though even then you might have obligations depending on the license.
If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.
Now, sure it sucks that you can’t do those things you mention for ordinary use, which we should, but you are still able to come up with your own ground-up solution for commercial purposes.
Indeed, this is how companies like Facebook got a head start because they created scrappers for MySpace that made the transition easier. If you try to do the same today, they will likely throw you in federal prison for "tampering" or commit lawfare so heinous it'll feel like a war crime.
> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.
That's not remotely how any progress has ever been made in the history of the human race. Newton himself said he stood on the shoulders of giants. Or as Sagan said, to bake an apple pie from scratch, you have to first invent the Universe.
A clever patch to an existing thing is exactly how you get to the next big thing after enough patches.
I don't think people realize how important incremental improvements are. Before open-source software took off, everyone either licensed a proprietary library or invented an ad-hoc solution. If the proprietary library was discontinued, you often couldn't extend or improve it (and even if you could, you couldn't share your changes), so you started over, either from scratch or with another vendor redoing the same work.
This is also why we have so much e-waste: once a manufacturer ditches a product, its usefulness is permanently limited, both by law and practicality. Copyright expires eventually, but so far in the future that we'll all be dead by then.
1) People in positions of authority are now openly anti-progress in an effort to pacify entrenched interests.
2) These same people are also openly anti-immigrant. In the past, a lot of science in the USA has been imported from other countries by way of immigration.
Less science equals less/inferior technology which equals smaller economy and weaker USA.
The US is destroying it's own advantage. For decades the US was pulling the best and brightest from all over the world into its Universities and companies. Why would anybody think stopping that would lead to a 'Golden Age'.
Seems like an arrogant American take. The United States primary and secondary schools are middling at best, and that has been showing through to its universities. Foreigners were already choosing Chinese universities. It's not like the recent administration could just "keep pulling", what do they have to appeal with? Obviously shutting off the flow of any and all talent is stupid, but it's a little arrogant to pretend it was not already diverting to better systems.
Most schools are middling - but the US was willing to give generous scholarships and post-graduation grants to smart immigrants to build it here. There was a long entrenched culture that in the US you could turn your intelligence into positive change and get rich doing it.
We've been slipping into rent seeking at least since the eighties though - so the share that actual researchers get has been shrinking while the culture has become much more hostile to immigration. It is a situation built on momentum though - so while the tools supporting it have been torn down we still do have a lot of people who moved here with the hope of leveraging it.
> There was a long entrenched culture that in the US you could turn your intelligence into positive change and get rich doing it.
Yes, this is still true, and why immigration to America maintained its previous momentum. It was often easier to get a student visa than a different immigration visa, so for the past 30 years or so that has been the primary route, and in turn has raised the prestige of American universities.
However, if you look at the American-born population, their students are not impressive. Quite the opposite, for how much funding their education gets. And—by federal interest—only ~10% of the undergraduate student body can be foreigners. Professors at American universities routinely complain about their students' low standards. Things are not the same as they were ten years ago, let alone thirty or fifty years ago.
I think international sentiment has not shifted to the point that this is common knowledge—that if people want to go international, they better attend a school in China or Switzerland—but it would have happened in a few years with or without Trump, and the decline would be as apparent as the primary and secondary school decline has been.
American universities led the world, without competition as a whole (there were a few individual universities elsewhere). Look at any ranking of universities worldwide, such as Times Higher Education.
That is true. It is also true that their primary and secondary schools were quickly dropping in rank relative to other countries in the 2010s, and their universities were following in the COVID/post-COVID era.
My experience at an American university (in the early 2020s) was that the native Americans were much less impressive than the international students, and the professors were mildly annoyed at them compared to previous generations of students they had taught. I think this is a common experience at American universities nowadays—I mean, what else would you expect with the primary/secondary school decline?—but I do not have any hard data to show you. I think you can find a lot of similar anecodotes on r/professors, though it seems to be more of a complain-subreddit than representative of all professors.
I think it is difficult to find data on this, as there are not many international assessments at the university level. You can look at research output, but research is kind of bullshit these days, and even if it weren't, it would be skewed by the older generations. You can look at international competitions, but does America do poorly in the ICPC because they're worse, or because they don't care? Brigham Young University (a small-fry religious school in Utah, USA) got a bronze medal a decade ago, significantly better than their other universities. If you investigate a little further, you'll find this university did decent at the Putnam around the same time, so they probably just had a few students who really tried hard. It's known that MIT dominates the Putnam, but that is now literally a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know many math people who chose MIT above other schools because it is the place Putnam winners go.
One thing you can look at is the graduate body composition. At elite universities, around 40% of graduate students are foreigners (compared to 30% 50 years ago). Across all universities, nearly half of PhDs are awarded to foreigners. However, this does not really prove American undergraduate students are falling behind, and it mildly supports the case that American universities maintain their prestige. I actually believe American universities do still maintain their prestige, just that they are more of a paper tiger than Americans like to believe. Almost like MIT with the Putnam, everyone goes to America because everyone goes to America.
Well, that plus a ton of investor money floating around. The dollar hegemony is still going strong, and while the invasion of Venezuela shows it might be a little weaker than the average American hopes, they're not going to let it go away without a fight.
They say Chinese elite universities are surpassing American ones in research and funding, and that 20% fewer international students enrolled in American universities in 2025. Though, of course, that was right after Trump took away Harvard student visas.
When was it ever substantially not "whoever could make it over the border"?
That only stopped being (mostly—see the Chinese Exclusion Act) our actual policy in what, the 1950s? And after that, much to the relief of the agriculture industry that sharply opposed the change, we de facto barely enforced the new policy.
By what metric is the US lagging? By any objective measure we can see the dominance of US technology. I think it’s most of the rest of the world that’s being left behind; Europe in particular. If what you’re saying is true the US economy would also be flagging but it’s not. If what you’re saying is true, you’d see the list of the world’s most valuable companies dominated by non-US firms.
I think you are confusing the current climate of immigration enforcement and reform with being anti-immigration. The US will continue to draw top talent because the US is where the bulk of the opportunities are and will be for at least the next 5 years.
It’s been widely discussed that the immigration system has been abused, especially by the tech industry. This reform started under Obama. The current outcry is a reaction to the most recent federal election. Reform does not mean the US is anti-immigrant. It may mean lower levels of immigration that’s more selective for talent.
Science creates the seeds, and what you’re citing are the fruits of seeds that were planted decades ago. Big tech only exists because of random science investments that were made long ago.
The metric isn’t how much fruit you have now, but how well you’re preparing the soil and planting the seeds for the next generation.
> think you are confusing the current climate of immigration enforcement and reform with being anti-immigration.
If this was true, Repubs would be handing out green cards at graduation ceremonies, at least for STEM fields. Instead, they are rolling out more pay to play schemes.
4) We've destroyed the public scientific job sector.
If your field of science isn't related to something the US military is interested in, you better have a degree in something directly related to pharmaceuticals.
A lot of the US's leadership in science was based purely on the momentum it gained from the progressive era and the cheap education we used to have. Ever since roughly Reagan, it's been slowly eroded to today's sorry state.
When I went to school, the promise was "get a degree in anything, it'll pay for itself". Now, gen z is actively choosing to avoid college because the ROI is horrendous.
Not really, there's been a pretty effective culture war saying, "STEM degrees are actually useless, you need to know how to have a human connection." Only around 25% of Bachelor's and Master's degrees are in STEM fields, though it shoots up to 65% of PhDs. It seems to be pointing towards most people not supporting STEM, and advocating for students to not go into STEM, despite having some of the most lucrative (in expected value) majors.
In my experience, it’s the opposite. Virtually everyone supports using data to make decisions, unless the data could harm them or their tribe.
For example, requiring elaborate experiments and trials to help develop medicine so you or a loved one bear cancer? Sure.
But if you can make money hawking berries to cure cancer? No data needed.
If casting doubt on vaccines without data helps you feel superior? No problem. If it can help you win elections and get into a position of power? Even better.
The US is falling prey to what has become obscenely common in democracies of late : the "plebs" going after the elites, for reasons valid or otherwise.
This often means that they'll often go after academics and artists who stick out like a sour thumb, instead of financial/industrial/political elites who they more likely have a grouse with. This results in very bad negative effects in the long-term, which these actors themselves don't have much foresight for.
Reminds me of Pol Pot killing off anyone who knew a foreign language, or Mao luring out Intellectual elites and them wiping them off in the cultural revolution or the destruction of India/Africa's British-era universities with toxic caste/race-politics (or US's toxic woke-politics, and now its continued destruction by its mirror-image in populist fascism).
Really makes you question many of the tenets we take for granted in "democracies".
Considering on the average 7/10 people either voted for Trump or didn't vote, (with Trump openly stating that he wants to neuter universities) Americans "think" they support science.
Ok, there probably are folks who can't differentiate between the Physics department and the Sociology department. Or who can tell the difference but who attack both anyway.
The problem for science is those folks. Right? The universities are actually teaching and advancing science. They're not the problem. The Pol Pot types are the problem. We know this very well from history.
No, of course, but the issue comes in the next step. How do they put their "support" of science into practice? For some, that means supporting increased budgets for grants, education, or basic research. For others, that means "restoring trust" by adding partisan steps. "Trusting the experts is not science", as RFK said.
I find these types of survey questions almost useless - of course people will say they support science, or democracy, or freedom, or increasing support for families. The devil is always in the details.
"It is sound science", "be open to debate", "studies show" is the kind of arguments they use a lot. They use twisted arguments from science's language.
Seven of the eight authors of the influential 2017 AI paper "Attention Is All You Need" are immigrants to the United States. The remaining author is the grandson of refugees.
And the majority of them didn’t get their degrees from US universities.
It's direct and blatantly relevant to the discussion that the transformer was invented in America and the cited role of immigrants in that invention, resultingly showing how ending immigration will impact future innovation.
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Extending your digital camera with new firmware? Illegal.
Inventing a custom ink or add-on for your printer? Illegal.
Repairing a tractor? or a ventilator? Illegal.
How do you expect anyone to get world-leading science done in this environment?
Science is lagging in the US because the US has destroyed viable careers in science.
Who does the hard work to get PHd in a scientific field knowing that they'll be saddled with hundreds of thousands of jobs in debt and that there's a good chance that they'll have no employment opportunities after the fact. Especially with the recent destruction of the public sector in scientific jobs, it's probably the worst time ever to get a degree in a field of science.
But hey, don't let basic research get in the way of confidence, amirite?
If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.
Now, sure it sucks that you can’t do those things you mention for ordinary use, which we should, but you are still able to come up with your own ground-up solution for commercial purposes.
Reinventing the universe every time you create something is expensive and impractical. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.
The former is how almost all innovation and invention works. The latter is a myth.
That's not remotely how any progress has ever been made in the history of the human race. Newton himself said he stood on the shoulders of giants. Or as Sagan said, to bake an apple pie from scratch, you have to first invent the Universe.
A clever patch to an existing thing is exactly how you get to the next big thing after enough patches.
This is also why we have so much e-waste: once a manufacturer ditches a product, its usefulness is permanently limited, both by law and practicality. Copyright expires eventually, but so far in the future that we'll all be dead by then.
What has changed is primarily 2 things:
1) People in positions of authority are now openly anti-progress in an effort to pacify entrenched interests.
2) These same people are also openly anti-immigrant. In the past, a lot of science in the USA has been imported from other countries by way of immigration.
Less science equals less/inferior technology which equals smaller economy and weaker USA.
We've been slipping into rent seeking at least since the eighties though - so the share that actual researchers get has been shrinking while the culture has become much more hostile to immigration. It is a situation built on momentum though - so while the tools supporting it have been torn down we still do have a lot of people who moved here with the hope of leveraging it.
Yes, this is still true, and why immigration to America maintained its previous momentum. It was often easier to get a student visa than a different immigration visa, so for the past 30 years or so that has been the primary route, and in turn has raised the prestige of American universities.
However, if you look at the American-born population, their students are not impressive. Quite the opposite, for how much funding their education gets. And—by federal interest—only ~10% of the undergraduate student body can be foreigners. Professors at American universities routinely complain about their students' low standards. Things are not the same as they were ten years ago, let alone thirty or fifty years ago.
I think international sentiment has not shifted to the point that this is common knowledge—that if people want to go international, they better attend a school in China or Switzerland—but it would have happened in a few years with or without Trump, and the decline would be as apparent as the primary and secondary school decline has been.
> their universities were following in the COVID/post-COVID era
I haven't heard of that. Where can I find more about it, if you remember?
I think it is difficult to find data on this, as there are not many international assessments at the university level. You can look at research output, but research is kind of bullshit these days, and even if it weren't, it would be skewed by the older generations. You can look at international competitions, but does America do poorly in the ICPC because they're worse, or because they don't care? Brigham Young University (a small-fry religious school in Utah, USA) got a bronze medal a decade ago, significantly better than their other universities. If you investigate a little further, you'll find this university did decent at the Putnam around the same time, so they probably just had a few students who really tried hard. It's known that MIT dominates the Putnam, but that is now literally a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know many math people who chose MIT above other schools because it is the place Putnam winners go.
One thing you can look at is the graduate body composition. At elite universities, around 40% of graduate students are foreigners (compared to 30% 50 years ago). Across all universities, nearly half of PhDs are awarded to foreigners. However, this does not really prove American undergraduate students are falling behind, and it mildly supports the case that American universities maintain their prestige. I actually believe American universities do still maintain their prestige, just that they are more of a paper tiger than Americans like to believe. Almost like MIT with the Putnam, everyone goes to America because everyone goes to America.
Well, that plus a ton of investor money floating around. The dollar hegemony is still going strong, and while the invasion of Venezuela shows it might be a little weaker than the average American hopes, they're not going to let it go away without a fight.
"Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip"
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking...
They say Chinese elite universities are surpassing American ones in research and funding, and that 20% fewer international students enrolled in American universities in 2025. Though, of course, that was right after Trump took away Harvard student visas.
That only stopped being (mostly—see the Chinese Exclusion Act) our actual policy in what, the 1950s? And after that, much to the relief of the agriculture industry that sharply opposed the change, we de facto barely enforced the new policy.
I think you are confusing the current climate of immigration enforcement and reform with being anti-immigration. The US will continue to draw top talent because the US is where the bulk of the opportunities are and will be for at least the next 5 years.
It’s been widely discussed that the immigration system has been abused, especially by the tech industry. This reform started under Obama. The current outcry is a reaction to the most recent federal election. Reform does not mean the US is anti-immigrant. It may mean lower levels of immigration that’s more selective for talent.
The metric isn’t how much fruit you have now, but how well you’re preparing the soil and planting the seeds for the next generation.
If this was true, Repubs would be handing out green cards at graduation ceremonies, at least for STEM fields. Instead, they are rolling out more pay to play schemes.
4) We've destroyed the public scientific job sector.
If your field of science isn't related to something the US military is interested in, you better have a degree in something directly related to pharmaceuticals.
A lot of the US's leadership in science was based purely on the momentum it gained from the progressive era and the cheap education we used to have. Ever since roughly Reagan, it's been slowly eroded to today's sorry state.
When I went to school, the promise was "get a degree in anything, it'll pay for itself". Now, gen z is actively choosing to avoid college because the ROI is horrendous.
virtually everyone supports the former.
For example, requiring elaborate experiments and trials to help develop medicine so you or a loved one bear cancer? Sure.
But if you can make money hawking berries to cure cancer? No data needed.
If casting doubt on vaccines without data helps you feel superior? No problem. If it can help you win elections and get into a position of power? Even better.
This often means that they'll often go after academics and artists who stick out like a sour thumb, instead of financial/industrial/political elites who they more likely have a grouse with. This results in very bad negative effects in the long-term, which these actors themselves don't have much foresight for.
Reminds me of Pol Pot killing off anyone who knew a foreign language, or Mao luring out Intellectual elites and them wiping them off in the cultural revolution or the destruction of India/Africa's British-era universities with toxic caste/race-politics (or US's toxic woke-politics, and now its continued destruction by its mirror-image in populist fascism).
Really makes you question many of the tenets we take for granted in "democracies".
Considering on the average 7/10 people either voted for Trump or didn't vote, (with Trump openly stating that he wants to neuter universities) Americans "think" they support science.
The problem for science is those folks. Right? The universities are actually teaching and advancing science. They're not the problem. The Pol Pot types are the problem. We know this very well from history.
Too many ideas are now beyond challenge; flawed ideas are validated through violence and deception, not scientific rigor or reasoning.
It isn't Science anymore. It's Lysenkoism in all but name.
The problem is that everyone has a different idea of what these good things are.
For some, science is vaccines, understanding global warming and the theory of evolution.
Others will say that real science is denying global warming, creationism, anti-vaxers or homeopathy.
I find these types of survey questions almost useless - of course people will say they support science, or democracy, or freedom, or increasing support for families. The devil is always in the details.
I haven't heard their advocates refer to those things as science, but rather they criticize science's validity.
"It is sound science", "be open to debate", "studies show" is the kind of arguments they use a lot. They use twisted arguments from science's language.
Human biology is a topic which otherwise scientific people won’t look at scientifically and hold quasi-religious beliefs about.
And the majority of them didn’t get their degrees from US universities.
No doubt Google was the catalyst though.