The US’s once overwhelming dominance in high technology is beginning to wane, and outsourcing is only one of the symptoms, reports Business Week.
Although the US is still the overall leader and Microsoft, General Electric, and Intel are household names, the Nordic countries are in the forefront of wireless communications, the EU in commercial aircraft, Japan in optical electronics and robotics, and Israel in information security technology. US per capita spending on scientific R & D lags other countries, and most of it is defence-related, the magazine says, with not enough being directed to “key disciplines such as chemistry, materials science, and physics”. China and India now have more science graduates than the US, with the lead expected to widen as the US falls behind in relative education spending. A measure of the shift is that in the decade between 1992-2002, the US went from being a net $35 billion exporter to a net $54 billion importer of high-tech products. An accompanying Los Angeles Times report shows the hollowing out effects of outsourcing on legendary Silicon Valley. Business Week and LA Times articles reproduced on www.supportingfacts.com Sorry for any cross posting.
