The United States' Technological Malfunction

With the globalization of technology across states, the demand for skilled employees and a vibrant technological education infrastructure raises unique challenges for maintaining the United States leadership in tech development, retaining US economic leadership in the global tech industry, and reinforcing national security. In 1995, American computer scientists, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, launched Netscape: the first publicly available Internet browser. The creation of Netscape signaled both the beginning of the dot-com bubble and the beginning of the first medium to instantaneously transmit data across borders. According to Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, Netscapes launch acted as a watershed moment both for the American tech sector for IT (information technology) sectors abroad (Friedman). As Netscape grew in popularity, fiber optic cables reached across borders and lowered the barrier for entry into the tech market, allowing countries like China and India to develop massive quantities of highly qualified workers at little cost. After the Y2K bug reached servers in 2000, the IT work typically delegated to American software developers were outsourced to workers in India and China, creating both an interdependence between the United States and these East Asian powers while revealing an emerging competition over economic dominance in the tech industry. Since Y2K, the United States has witnessed a growing enthusiasm gap between itself and its geopolitical rivals over STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. The percentage of total American undergraduates majoring in STEM fields has fallen from 32% in 1995 to 27% in 2005 (Lips). Faced with global issues, and dependency on technological solutions, a question emerges about how the United States can make itself stand out in a world crowded by more competitive and enthusiastic states. A primary source of technology diffusion is the outsourcing of software engineers and data centers overseas. Of the three large East European and Asian superpowers (India, China, and Russia), India has seen the most staggering growth in information technology. Since the 1990s, India has seen an average annual growth of 40% in software exports, expanding its export revenue from $7.7 billion in 1990 to around $50 billion in 2008 (Sahay). Moreover, while in 1990, five percent of the software development process was completed in India (with 95% being completed in the United States), by 1995, Indian engineering accounted for 70% of the software development process (Ibid). China, with the worlds largest potential pool of human resources, has witnessed incredible growth in the IT industry. Backed by a growthobsessed government, Chinas software industry counts 400,000 employees and harbors predictions of economic growth to rival that of India in the coming years (Ibid). Although initially late to the dot-com bubble, Russia has grown into a formidable technological competitor. Russia regularly competes with the

United States for software contracts and has seen an influx of Fortune 500 companies relocate to Russia for its competitive wages and highly educated workforce (Ibid). India, China, and Russias astonishing growth in software developers and engineers reveals a global prioritization of technology that the US is failing to come to terms with. The second major factor explaining the decline of American preeminence in technology is the international focus on STEM education. After World War II, the United States ascended to superpower status on the back of its growing industrial and technological sector. Since 2000, sagging innovation has allowed other nations to fill the vacuum with highly motivated citizens immigrating to the United States for its educational opportunities and returning to their home countries to fund ventures that compete with US companies. In India, the social stigma around failure and the security of the tech industry drives students to complete engineering degrees at a rate unparalleled in the United States (Wadhwa). Moreover, Indian enthusiasm for technological development and its ready source of qualified graduates has attracted 265 Fortune 500 companies to establish headquarters in India (Sahay). Although India currently has the largest domestic tech infrastructure, China has the largest STEM-oriented educational system. In 2001, 18.8% of Chinese students who studied a STEM field in the United States ended up returning to China upon graduation (Ibid). The emigration of educated student, known colloquially as the brain drain, allows Chinese entrepreneurs to transfers their technological skills, industrial connections, and physical technological systems back to China. Russia, driven by the failure of the Cold War to compete with the United States, poses the largest education threat to the United States in the tech sector. Given a massive pool of scientists educated in space, nuclear, and engineering systems since the end of World War II, Russia has unmatched enthusiasm and resources devoted to reinvigorating its domestic tech sector. Currently, Russia boasts the third-largest per capita scientists and engineers in the world, a large ethnic population that fosters cross-cultural communications with India, China, and European states, and salaries around half of the Indian median salary (Ibid). These two factors create problems for US competitiveness that has declined marketed since the end of the Cold War. An uncompetitive US tech sector has numerous potential consequences if left unfixed. Primarily, the US loses critical economic strength, which translates directly to soft-power influence over other states and economies. Without a revitalized tech sector, other countries enter a positive feedback loop whereby if the United States continues to lose jobs, new generations of engineering students will become incentivized to move away from the United States to complete their education and pursue engineering careers. Furthermore, the United States loses the economic power to motivate other nations to cooperate over multinational tech projects and institutions while getting shut out of a critical global market.

The United States also faces major national security risks without a competitive technological industry. Firstly, a brain drain in domestic engineers guts the already-feeble aerospace sector in the United States. With projected defense spending cuts by the Obama administration and the lack of a coherent vision for the future of the aerospace industry, engineering students have displayed waning enthusiasm for what is seen as an outdated industry (Charette). However, the United States forgoes a major research and development sector while losing an air force necessary to provide flexible military operations abroad that help the United States pursue its realist objectives (Lips). Secondly, a suffering tech sector leaves the United States vulnerable to cyber-security risks that could potentially exploit critical servers with national implications. In June 2007, intelligence agencies traced to China hacked multiple US government networks and leaked sensitive documents to an unknown website in China (Lips). In that same month, a different group of Chinese hackers managed to penetrate the Department of Defenses computer defenses and accessed various security documents (Ibid). The growth of STEM education abroad has combined technological fluency with a nationalistic desire that critically undermines the competitiveness and security of the United States in anarchic world. The question of the flagging US technology sector in the face of escalating globalization asks what the United States can do to regain its former competitive edge. Thus, I advocate a three-pronged approach: a sizable increase in funding for STEM education in the United States, an increase in available visas, and a massive technological public works project within the aerospace industry. The first part of the approach provides the capabilities for a new generation of students to pursue engineering and tech professions to develop its technological human resources. The second part seeks to lower the barrier to working in the United States, which hinders the ability of skilled foreign workers to bring their technological expertise to the United States. While China, India, and Russia have loose restrictions that easily allow large companies and workers to move abroad, the United States visa system discourages workers from working domestically (Lips). While a large number of capable applicants are necessary for a powerful tech sector, the final component provides the critical motivation for these workers to pursue a tech career. Following the footsteps of the Manhattan and the Apollo projects, the United States needs to provide a massive public works project (ie. renewable energy structures, NASA projects, revolutionary infrastructure) to spur enthusiasm for technology and recapture the imagination of American students. Armed with a motivated and expansive workforce, the United States can recapture the global leadership experienced after World War II.

Works Cited:

Charette, Robert. STEM Education Funding in the US Is More or Less Needed. Spectrum. 8 June 2012. <http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/at-work/education/stem-education-in-the-us-is-more-or-less-needed>

Friedman, Thomas. Its a Flat World After All. New York Times. 3 April 2005. <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print&positio n=>

Lips, Dan and Jean Baker McNeil. A New Approach to Improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education. The Heritage Foundation. 15 April 2005. <http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/04/a-new-approach-to-improving-science-technologyengineering-and-math-education>

Sahay, Sundeep, Brian Nicholson, and S. Krishna. Global IT Outsourcing: Software Development Beyond Borders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Wadhwa, Vivek. The Future of Indian Technology. Techcrunch. 10 November 2010. <http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/the-future-of-indian-technology/>