I have been a member of the METAR board for over 20 years. I may be wrong, bit I believe I have enough experience following trends to post my own observations.
I posted recently about a battery innovation out of Korea. What struck me about it was that it was an advanced institute (Like MIT) that had made the innovation. I mentioned it to my wife, and being long suffering she let me talk it out.
What I reminisced about was the gradual shift away from the U.S. institutions to foreign, mostly Asian institutions. At first it was an occasional paper that had collaborators from outside the U.S. Then about 10 years ago, it started being paper lead by foreign institutions. Now I am seeing the majority of innovative thought and research either being lead by foreign institutions or being completed within foreign mostly Asian institutions.
I try to focus on the positive and pretty much ignore the negative, but even with intentional blindness, I am becoming aware that much of the paper produced by U.S. led and to a greater extent, western science and engineering is incremental at best, and little more than busy work at worst. This says something about western culture. I am not sure what, but it gives me a deep sense of disquiet.
Qazulight