Half the World is ahead of the US.
95+% of first-world countries are ahead of the US. The US is making a grave mistake in slowing our switchover* to EV. The EV solution to transportation is far better than the ICE vehicle solution because it is simpler and much more efficient. The mistake is being made for various reasons - political, social, and historical. I really hope we can catch up someday, but it’s the kind of thing that requires a “breakout” of sorts on the curve of adoption, and we are nowhere near such a breakout.
* “Switchover” doesn’t mean 100%, it means for all appropriate uses of transportation, probably well over 80%, or even over 90%.
Yeah, well, that’s not gonna happen. While other countries have been able to take invention leads developed here and overtake the industry*, I’m trying to think of one that’s worked the other way.
*[The modern fax machine was invented by Xerox (Yeah, some guy in Scotland made one in 1843 or something but that’s not what we’re talking about). And Japan took it. Digital screen industry? Gone. Laser & inkjet printers? Gone. Solar panels? Gone. Electronics assembly? Gone. Advanced chip production? Gone. EV’s? Mostly gone. ]
[Not to mention such standbys as Levis, fashion, tires, toys, and general goods…l]
Other countries have been quite strategic about targeting technologies originated here, offering cheap labor and/or incentives and/or government subsidies and/or all the other things that have caused American manufacturers to move overseas.
China, alone, has taken this to a new art form, and the US government, hobbled by the “Oh we can’t do anything about it, the free market, we can’t pick winners and losers” mentality has gone right along - to the detriment of the American worker.
Now the newest, and brightest category, one that is worldwide in scope and high dollar in value - the same one that powered the US to an industrial edge at the beginning of the 20th century, is running away at full speed - and we’re helping it along.
Stupidity reigns. It mostly goes back to Reagan.
Perhaps you’re looking for it in all the wrong places?
reportedly their “loitering attack one-way drone” was reverse engineered from a (captured) Iranian Shahed.
Kagan alerted me to the drone.
I like Kagan.
ralph DARPA plays by different rules?
Well, that’s a single example, and the US hardly dominates the drone industry. Indeed, I think we were first with it, but I’m quite sure that China is now the dominant drone provider, possibly followed by Israel.
But I’d be happy to hear any newish technologies which rose to prominence in another country and which the US took over after-the-fact.
(Yes, I know that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain and we brought it to fruition, but that was a very long time ago, and before our current Welchian business ethic.)