Then came three enormous waves of academic and scientific talent to the US.
I don't think people have quite internalized *how* the US became the global leader in science and technology. It's partially a story of massive global talent migration.
And it's important to get this story right if we want to maintain
Then came three enormous waves of academic and scientific talent to the US.
In a massive own-goal, 1930s Nazi Germany dismissed ~15% of the physicists who made up a stunning 64% (!) of their physics citations.
With the Cold War looming, the US brought over ~1,600 scientists through Operation Paperclip and the Soviets ~2,500 through Operation Osoaviakhim.
Perhaps an underrated element in the fall of the Soviet Union is how we absorbed most of their top scientific talent as faith in the regime was starting to falter.
— Caleb Watney (@calebwatney) July 6, 2020
A great 1990 NYT article on it here:https://t.co/NXBldbgoV0 pic.twitter.com/TEgytTYsJv
https://t.co/i0QMZeQaEa
Using the Nobel Prize in Physics as a rough proxy, American scientists were involved in only three of the thirty prizes awarded between 1901 to 1933.
And a huge share of these Nobel laureates have been either first- or second-generation immigrants from these three waves.
We were unquestionably the best location for scientific research and so most inventors/promising academics wanted to come here.
1) US immigration restrictions are growing more burdensome
2) There are better opportunities to contribute to cutting-edge research at home
https://t.co/EYSUhofYeO
Today we grudgingly let the most talented individuals apply to live here; we do not actively recruit them.
The main job of immigration agents seems to be “avoid letting in terrorists” rather than “maximize the growth potential of the United States.”
We are the R&D lab for the world and we should act like it.
https://t.co/jwGI6exill
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I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
The tragedy of revolutionaries is they design a utopia by a river but discover the impure city they razed was on stilts for a reason.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) June 19, 2016
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
