I always heard my whole life about “those people” from third world countries. With the inflection that we were so superior. Slowly, Americans must ask themselves what is our place in the world now that the most of the rest of the world has become connected to the internet and has a good educational system. The literacy rate for the young in China and India are high. They will be the ones doing more and more of this stuff in the future.
The Chinese invented gunpowder.
The Indians invented the Kama Sutra.
What could possibly go wrong?....................
We’re becoming a third world country while they are taking our place.
Another factor is a political/social climate that is friendly to science. Germany was once on the cusp of this, which is why a lot of great scientists, including Einstein, hailed from Germany. Another key motivation is profit incentive. The Middle East is in general short supply of these motivations unless oil is the source of profit, which doesn’t require too much effort anyway since someone else built most of the infrastructure. Consider Africa another basket case. Europe and the U.S. seem to be focusing more on socialism and “down with the corporations” that you’d expect in communist countries, while ironically China is focusing more on how the real world works.