Member-only story
There’s much rhetoric about the decline of America on both a relative and absolute scale as China, India, and the rest of the world rises. This rhetoric implies that the future is inevitable and there’s nothing America can do about it but sit idly and helplessly witnessing its own decline.
If we take a step back from our current political environment and into larger timeframes and ask ourselves “why” America would decline, there’s only one real long-term reason, and that reason is human talent. The true war America must fight and must win is not a hot war on the battlefield, but a war for talent.
I will consider here why it's important that we recruit the best and brightest, and some practical steps we can take. I will focus mostly on China since it’s America’s primary competitor more than other countries now, but all these ideas apply for any other country as well, especially India.
“Microsoft must win the IQ war, or we won’t have a future. I don’t worry about Lotus or IBM, because the smartest guys would rather come to work for Microsoft. Our competitors for IQ are investment…
