Perhaps Free Republic has not entirely repudiated its widespread support of the thesis of The Bell Curve.
Not all the bright people are Asian, of course, but perhaps a disproportionate number are, and there are an awful lot of them, whether smarter or not. They constitute a powerful resource for India and, especially China, in the existential struggle in the brave new world of AI to come.
More, you have the simple reality that they are far more industrious than our new generation. That the Chinese believe in a 9-9-6 work schedule: 9 AM to 9 PM workday, 6 days a week, tells us we are complacent born of relative (repeat "relative") prosperity.
The Chinese and Indian governments take their obligation to educate this generation in a STEM curriculum seriously, far more seriously than we do, judged by comparing the sheer numbers of graduates. Clearly, this new young generation of Chinese and Indians takes far more seriously the need to educate themselves than do our youth.
Finally, part of the blame clearly rests upon the leftist social engineers of our educational establishment who will always favor a foreign applicant of color over one of our own. Hence, fault is not entirely with the government nor with our entrepreneurs, our field generals if you will, who will either win or lose us this existential war for survival in the new digital age.
When faced with the existential challenge of World War II and, subsequently, of the Cold War, we as a nation did what was necessary to win. That means importing Nazis to build rockets or conduct intelligence in the Cold War. That means after the war repenting for locking up Japanese, and some Germans and Italians. On proactive side, we were happy enough to develop the ideas of one German Jew to build a war-ending bomb.
The answer is not to throw the baby out with the bath, but to protect American workers who are competent against foreign worker exploitation, while at the same time prudently arming ourselves with all the talent we can attract from whatever source to win.
The stakes are that high, and we do not want to replay in the digital age what we did to the Japanese.
