
Ask HN: Why is the US the center of the tech industry? - mastrsushi
Is it the historic innovation, American culture in general? There are so many other countries with brilliant minds, we live over the internet. Yet foreign companies are ignored for Google, Apple, and Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. I dont hear anything elsewhere, China being the only exception. And they&#x27;re feared, to the point where Huawei&#x27;s banned.<p>Do you think another country will take its place? Will growing internet adoption lead to growing patterns of  geographic decentralization in the industry? Is it possible cryptocurrencies will cause a rise in an internet centered tech industry?
======
jandrewrogers
The most interesting question is why do Americans dominate _software_
technology specifically? It is the most level playing field of all
technologies. The skills to develop a state-of-the-art next-generation
software technology are readily available and learnable globally while
requiring negligible capital. On paper, you would expect this to be an area
where Americans have the smallest advantage instead of one of the biggest.

Having worked with software engineering teams around the world over the years,
and also done a lot of software tech M&A diligence, I've come to appreciate
the massive impact that local culture has on being effective at advanced
software development. This goes beyond the culture of the company itself; the
level of ambition and optimistic self-belief required to be effective at
developing very advanced software isn't terribly compatible with environments
where Tall Poppy Syndrome/Law of Jante/etc is a real social dynamic, and that
is very much the rule rather than the exception.

~~~
amboo7
This. Having worked in the US and Europe, the local culture is ubiquitous.
What is best for advanced software development, and engineering in general
(IMO), is a low-context culture[1], which is dominant in the US -- so that
many immigrants of diverse backgrounds can communicate efficiently.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-
context...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-
context_cultures)

------
donatj
My 2¢ in taking to people from other countries, it's the American attitude.
Americans for better or worse think we can do anything, and they will try
incessantly. They will start a business with far less experience and
qualifications than others, pull themselves up by the bootstraps and
potentially fail spectacularly - just to get right back up and do it again.

I do not get this sense taking to people from other countries at all, largely
in part Canada and the UK. They aren't trying to change the world.

~~~
jenkinsj
American attitude???

Andy Grove: Hungarian

Nikola Tesla: Serbian

Sergey Brin: Russian

Patrick and John Collison: Irish

Mathilde Collin: French

Jerry Yang: Taiwanese

~~~
jinushaun
America attracts innovators. They do it in America because they can’t do it at
home. Whether it’s true or not, for immigrants, there’s a sense that upward
mobility is possible in America.

There was an old episode of Top Gear where Clarkson was driving around an
exotic car in America. He noted that Americans were super excited about the
car, giving him complements, posing for pictures, saying that one day they’ll
own one and generally being positive and optimistic.

In contrast, he reflected that if he did the same thing in the UK, he’d either
get insulted for “showing off” or people would be generally
negative/pessimistic because they could never afford one.

~~~
brianpgordon
That's incredibly depressing to me. If he really talked to a representative
cross-section of America, almost all of those optimistic people will never be
wealthy enough to afford the car. At least the Brits know where they stand.
We're never going to be able to effectively address wealth inequality if every
person on the street believes that they're going to be a multimillionaire some
day.

~~~
wh-uws
You're missing the point.

Americans believe we can and that belief allows the mental and emotional
energy to _try_

No one is guaranteed success. But if you never believe you even could you
would be much less inclined to even try.

~~~
brianpgordon
I'm sorry, but I would call that false hope.

------
est31
First of all, the technology industry itself is not just exclusive to the US.
Samsung is south Korean, Nintendo is from Japan, Siemens is from Germany, ASML
is from the Netherlands. All of these are highly technological companies, with
Nintendo having been at the frontiers of technology since decades. But of
course, Silicon Valley is unique with its high concentration of hightech
companies. This has multiple reasons:

* The US federal government provided massive amounts of funding, especially in earlier years. Oracle for example was jumpstarted by the CIA, an US federal agency.

* Economically, the US is highly developed, and has a gigantic market with over 200 million people who all speak one language. The EU didn't even have the unified market since a few years ago, and there is still inconsistency regarding the language. China does have both a more or less consistent legal regime as well as a consistent language due to their past efforts to teach their population a common language (this is non-zero effort as Chinese dialects are so different to each other, probably if it weren't for political influence you'd classify them as several languages).

* California in specific has at-will employment laws meaning a start up can be wrapped up quickly without having to pay large sums of money to employees.

* The US federal government maintains a large spying apparatus which has been increased massively after the 2001 terror attacks. They don't just use it for evil terrorists. It has been confirmed multiple times that they perform industrial espionage against companies in western countries, supposed allies of the US. The US government then gives the results of the espionage to industrial partners.

* Nowadays there are of course massive network effects.

~~~
creato
> The US federal government maintains a large spying apparatus which has been
> increased massively after the 2001 terror attacks. They don't just use it
> for evil terrorists. It has been confirmed multiple times that they perform
> industrial espionage against companies in western countries, supposed to be
> allies of the US. The US government then gives the results of the espionage
> to industrial partners.

Specifically which company has benefited from industrial espionage in a way
that can even begin to answer the question posed by the OP?

~~~
est31
Of course, this is not the sole reason why the US industry is where it is
today. It's rather one of many reasons. The effect is much smaller than, say,
soviet espionage on US technology was. But here you have some links on US
industrial espionage on German companies:

[https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-
atlant...](https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-atlantic-
espionage-claimed-german-wind-company)

[https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-firms-
fe...](https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-firms-fear-
industrial-espionage-after-snowden-leaks-a-912624.html)

~~~
jonnybgood
Those links don’t give any evidence of industrial espionage on German
companies. One even claims those no proof of it.

------
badpun
Culture. America is extremely materialistic, individualistic, competititve and
success-oriented. Whereas in many other countries, many people shrug at the
thought of becoming a billionaire ("what do I need all this money for?"), in
America, the default reaction is "THAT'S AMAZING".

This makes Americans take way more risks with entrepreneurship, as, for them,
they are chasing the ultimate dream. It may be bad for them on individual
level (as most of them fail, sometimes with serious consequences to their
lives), but the US society as a whole benefits, because of the value created
by the successful minority.

------
toasterlovin
Lots of human capital because A) we have a large population, B) we have the
highest level of economic development in the world, and C) we've done a great
job of importing talent.

We were the main beneficiaries of the Europeans driving out their Jewish
population. As a group, European Jews are responsible for something like 25%
of our intellectual output over the last century, but only make up 2% of our
population. Lately we've been importing an intellectual class of similar
caliber from the Indian subcontinent. Kinda hard to lose the race when you
have a huge proportion of the world's intellectual talent.

~~~
mateo411
How do you measure 25% of the world's intellectual output? I'm a fan of Judea
Pearl and Woody Allen, but I think that's a pretty strong statement to make

~~~
coryrc
He/she's talking Albert Einstein, et al:
[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/august/german-jewish-
inv...](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/august/german-jewish-
inventors-081114.html)

~~~
csdreamer7
Also, Sergey Brin (Google co-Founder).

His father's tale of anti-semitism in Russia is now quite famous.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-brin-anti-semitism-
forced-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-brin-anti-semitism-forced-my-
family-out-of-russia/)

------
jcranmer
There are several things that contributed to the rise of the dominance of
American tech industry. In no particular order:

* World War II. In WWII, the only country that had the means to meaningfully fund longer-term military research projects was the US; in other countries such as Germany and the UK, these projects were defunded or reduced in scope to let the money and resources be allocated to things that would help prevent the collapse of the country. Furthermore, the US was the only large country to escape significant infrastructure destruction, which would preoccupy most of the rest of the world for another decade or so.

* The development of a strong education and research system. This is in and of itself a more complex topic, but one thing I'd call out is that the American wealthy have had a stronger tradition of philanthropy than their European counterparts, and a lot of that philanthropy was geared towards making sure that the US was well-stocked with universities, libraries, museums, and the like.

* Clustering effects. Companies tend to want to be near other companies that do similar things--it's why there's a lot a tech companies in Silicon Valley, even if they could do their job equally well from Illinois. Early computer research ended up being in the US, so the computer technology clusters have ended up being very US-centric.

* Market size. The US has historically been the largest market for tech, and arguably still is for certain segments of the market. Europe has been (and generally remains) too fragmented to be a single market, China and India historically too poor, and the USSR hampered itself with internal controls. Furthermore, the size of the US market also means that it tends to be harder for foreign entrants to break into the market than it is for US entrants to break into foreign markets.

> Do you think another country will take its place?

Eventually, yes. On what time scale, I can't say.

> Will growing internet adoption lead to growing patterns of geographic
> decentralization in the industry?

No. The internet has not reversed the trend for businesses to cluster
together, and I see no reason to expect that should change.

> Is it possible cryptocurrencies will cause a rise in an internet centered
> tech industry?

I don't see how they could...

~~~
atmosx
> The development of a strong education and research system.

Are you talking about the 5-10 top universities? On average Europeans have by
far and large better educational system. It's not even comparable IMHO. On
average Europeans are much better educated and that has to do with the fact
that education is part of state-funded welfare in most European countries,
while in the US education is expensive and only a small minority can afford
it.

------
DeonPenny
Its pretty much culture. The US is open to ambitious people from across the
world unlike a lot of countries, the US is big un deregulation unlike Europe
which stifles a lot of their companies, there's one language, there's a
culture of acceptable failure, willingness to try despite lacking experience,
and slow-moving governments.

Its probably more but this is what I've seen.

------
cgrealy
The same reason it's the current largest economy.... a happy accident of
history and geography.

Every other major economic power was devastated after WW2. Because the US was
geographically isolated from the major theatres of war, it was in a good
position to capitalise on the investment in technology at the dawn of the
transistor age.

~~~
blago
I've heard this argument many times but it never rang true to me. Here is why:

Every nation has gone true adversity and many had bounced off in a matter of
years.

The US economy has been dominating (measured by % of world GDP) since long
before WW2. Ref: [https://infogram.com/share-of-world-gdp-throughout-
history-1...](https://infogram.com/share-of-world-gdp-throughout-
history-1gjk92e6yjwqm16)

Also worth noting is that the US has faced its own headwinds including a civil
war just a few decades before its ascent to global domination.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Civil war was eighty years earlier and didn’t result in complete destruction
due to lack of technology.

In other threads mention the British tech giveaway, German scientists, and
booming infrastructure compared to Europe and Asia in ruins. The can-do
attitude was a multiplier.

WWII was a hundred year boost.

~~~
blago
> Civil war was eighty years earlier

Earlier than what, the Great Depression? The civil war resulted in > 500,000
deaths and hardly made a dent in the upward trend that was already underway.

> didn’t result in complete destruction due to lack of technology.

Europe was rebuilt 60 years ago (infrastructure, industry, and all)

> WWII was a hundred year boost.

Not sure where you get this information but looking at the data I linked, WW2
provided a gentle touch before the US started to slide down and has been ever
since.

~~~
mixmastamyk
It’s not hard to have an upward trend from zero.

Also % of world gdp is not a great measurement. Numbers not great either.
Europe lay in ruins in 1950, then rebuilt. A gradual tapering is unlikely. No
down cycle for US civil war, very unlikely.

------
kstenerud
A few things:

1\. America's early expansion was designed to gain control over the entirety
of the Mississippi river, which has the largest lockless waterway system
serving the longest "useful" land area in the world with cheap boat
transportation. This cheap transportation is the primary reason for American
early development success, and continues to benefit America immensely to this
day.

2\. Every other developed country suffered massive losses in the world wars.
America suffered no damage to her land or infrastructure, and was able to use
her superior position at the end of the war to gain even more economic
advantage over allies and foes alike.

3\. America binged importing top scientific talent at the end of the second
world war, most notably from Germany by offering them amnesty from war crimes
(which massively boosted their rocketry, medical, and electronics industries).

The rest is largely snowball effect.

~~~
TACIXAT
Any reading on 1? I was thinking about how America gained ground in the world,
from early colonial, to the industrial revolution, to the internet giants. I
haven't read much about the Mississippi in relation to that era of our
industry.

~~~
kstenerud
Encyclopedia Britannica has a decent introduction [1]. There are a number of
books that cover the early development of nations, but the name of the book
that dealt with waterways in depth escapes me at the moment. Possibly
something by Marvin Harris or Jared Diamond?

[1] [https://www.britannica.com/place/Mississippi-
River/History-a...](https://www.britannica.com/place/Mississippi-
River/History-and-economy)

~~~
jcranmer
I think saying that American expansion was _designed_ to control the
Mississippi River is a stretch. The main expansion that occasioned it was the
Louisiana Purchase, which was completely unintentional: the Americans went to
France to ask for New Orleans, and were willing to pay up to $10 million for
it, but Napoleon opened with an offer of all of Louisiana (doubling the size)
for the bargain price of $15 million.

Louisiana wasn't a primary focus of the US foreign policy, particularly in the
early 1800s. Instead, the US was more concerned with staying out of the
deteriorating situation in Europe (during the Napoleonic Wars), and the main
expansion targets would have been Canada and Florida.

------
tomnipotent
Since the big Intel cash out, it's been venture capital.

Europe & Asia is private equity territory, which is a fundamentally different
attitude and approach to high-risk, high-growth business (as in they rarely do
it). VC firms expect to make their money on IPOs & exits which encourages
innovation and experimentation, while PE firms expect to make money from
operations and interests on obliged loans which favors smart operations and
good margins.

~~~
holdenc
Completely agree. But, I think this begs another question -- why does venture
capital thrive in the USA so well as opposed to Asia? Is it a cultural thing?
or a fundraising thing?

------
redsymbol
American and moderately successful entrepreneur here.

I had to look up the Law of Jante. My reaction:

Holeee crap. That's one set of beliefs that is practically guaranteed to block
ANYONE from manifesting even a fraction of their innovative potential.

(Is it even real? Can anyone from the Nordic region confirm or deny?)

Going even further:

If someone wants to shape their mindset, etc. into that of someone who is on a
path to massive entrepreneurial success, and compelled to create something of
lasting impact and value to the world...

You could almost take those rules, reword each to their _opposite_ , and then
read those opposites to yourself as daily affirmations.

That'll start to program your beliefs into something much, much more self-
empowering. Rather than massively self-limiting.

(Maybe I'm indirectly revealing part of the answer to the OP's question here.)

In the USA, we have the metaphor of the crab bucket, and it's a real social
effect. I had to escape it myself in my own family (which I basically did
through over a decade of sheer grit and tenacity, plus self-programming with
techniques like affirmations).

[Happy ending: having got to the other side of it, I'm closer to my extended
family now than ever before.]

But if I got to pick, I'd take the crab bucket over the Law of Jante every
day.

~~~
ThJ
It was originally meant as satire of small-town Scandinavia. But... You're
definitely not encouraged make a big deal out of yourself over here. Maturity
means to do your part to help the people around you. Taking up space is
somewhat frowned upon and people are generally uncomfortable with accepting
compliments. The mindset is collective. But there's a social class of business
people and professional athletes who don't think that way. I think you
basically have to be in small circles, have special abilities or be born into
a family of business people to get exposed to an individualist mindset like
that.

~~~
ThJ
I'm from Norway and the Norwegian ideal of wealth is that you're not supposed
to show it off.

The richest man in Norway is real estate mogul Olav Thon, and he basically
dresses like a tramp.

------
takanori
Government spending on infrastructure including defense. Defense has
historically been the largest funder/purchaser of tech. Yes, we’re in a period
where consumer tech is driving innovation, but that hasn’t historically been
true.

------
village-idiot
Accident of history and sheer momentum. We had the cash and research
institutions during the beginning of the digital age, and as a result we have
the brain trust for both programming and hardware design. Remember that a huge
percentage of programming languages, documentation, and surrounding culture
(blogs, etc.) are not only in English, but culturally American. That’s a huge
advantage for America in the tech space.

------
codingslave
One thing I'm surprised I havent seen here is the respect that programming
gets in America. If youre a decent engineer you can basically walk into a job
making at minimum 150k a year, at any time. You are paid well, given some
level of autonomy, etc. In other countries engineers are at the absolute
bottom of the totem pole, there is no respect for the craft, and you are
expected to be promoted out of the ASAP. This has all sorts of secondary
effects like bad technology, no progress, no risk taking from engineers who
can get another well paid job if they fail. I honestly feel like there must be
opportunities all over Europe to show up with a much better tech product and
steam roll the incumbents.

Another clear reason is how fragmented Europe is. All of the different
countries have different customs, languages, and cultures. This makes it hard
to scale a product. It's the opposite case in the USA, no such barriers,
easier to scale across 300M people.

~~~
arduinomancer
Yeah reading what some people say online, it sounds like in some countries
programming is seen as more like grunt work or the same as IT work. Whereas
America really glorifies the hacker/startup mentality, for example in stuff
like The Social Network or HBO’s Silicon Valley.

------
josho
Read Steve Blank’s blog. He has several articles outlining how Silicon Valley
started, why it continues, and why it isn’t easily replicated elsewhere.

------
stretchwithme
“It always seemed like when there was cool technology or things happening, it
was kinda of in the United States. So, my goal as a kid was to get to America
basically.”

Elon Musk

------
xvilka
You narrow tech down to the software. If you add electronics and engineering,
well, you will see also a bunch of European and Japanese companies.

------
bobosha
PG's essay from nearly 15 years ago is still very relevant and IMO sums up
best why America is so dominant in tech (and ohh btw also in entertainment and
a bunch of other areas)
[http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html)

------
Teracotage
The eco system thing is one, the second is: Geopolitics, which plays a big
role in that, I mean with the huge US influence the Silicon Valley companies
can be global trendsetters, think of the FCC standing in the global,telecom
sector.US allies could not ban UBER although they hate it, but they have to
play the American (open market) rules. There were many superior products by
non-American companies, Creative Technology got the first portable audio
player, years ahead of Apple, yet they underestimated the value of the
American market and spearheaded MP3 with total disregard for copyright issues
(Napster days), Russian companies produce good stuff-Kaspersky et al- but they
do not have the full "Eco system".

------
adamzhou
US companies give much higher pay than Europe and China.

A beyond-average elementary programmer gets $40K/yr in China with 9-9-6 life.
But the same person in the United States may get $120K or even more with a
9-6-5 life.

So many Chinese programmers are moving to the US for higher pay.

~~~
adamzhou
* I dont hear anything elsewhere, China being the only exception. And they're feared, to the point where Huawei's banned.

Not every Chinese developer could get out of China to get higher pay because
of tight competition, family, and traditions.

It should be mentioned that: 1\. US companies in China (like Google,
Microsoft, etc.) do not give higher pay than Chinese companies (like BAT,
Toutiao, Pinduoduo). 2\. Apartment price in China is very high. You can't
easily find an apartment inside Beijing's 5th-ring-road having a <$10,000/m2
price.

Developers that cannot go aboard can only work hard in Chinese companies to
pay the apartment loan.

~~~
rognjen
Comparing pay directly like that is not very fair.

Many other things need to be taken into account including cost of living and
services.

------
cltsang
Freedom and democracy are vital to open and honest discussion, which in turn
drives innovation. Sense of safety and security on all fronts let people
concentrate on ideas and execution, rather than things.

------
president
The US has been an established and time-tested platform for churning out
businesses. All the reasons others have mentioned including culture,
deregulation, etc may play a part but to me, it is the post-war head-start and
momentum of continued success that has kept other countries from reigning
supreme. Countries are constantly losing top talent to the U.S. because we
have the money/opportunities to attract them and these countries lose out on
any potential successes. Who knows, this could all change if it hasn't
already.

------
atmosx
My take on this: I believe the 2nd WW is the major historical event that led
the most bright scientists of that era to the USA. From that point on, most
major technological advancements were made in the USA. Whoever has the most
advanced technology wins the war. At the beginning the other equally
technologically advanced site was believed to be the USSR. Nowadays is China.
Europe relies on the USA for _protection_ and the price to pay is to stay
technologically irrelevant, which means irrelevant in every sense.

------
chapium
These companies were built on the shoulders of giants in silicon valley which
had a ton of cold war era science foundation grants helping to prime the
emerging industry.

------
return1
From an outside perspective, americans are more willing to try (and to dump)
new things, period. It takes an arduous amount of energy to convince europeans
to do the same, and you re likely to be rewarded with obnoxious remarks. And
you cant grow a product if nobody is using it, thats why US wins. It is also a
big homogeneous market, which means niches are sizeable. In europe , niches
are divided /28

------
rognjen
I think another big part of it is down to the lack of regulation.

Other countries with similar socioeconomic conditions tend to regulate things
quicker plus have social programmes (healthcare, workers rights etc)

The US does neither.

I think this makes it easier to start in the first place.

The other part, as others have pointed out, is the extreme development the US
achieved on the back of WWII that provided capital which has snowballed since.

------
chungleong
One word: baseball. Love of the sport is what makes Americans different from
other nations. One man facing the opposing team. With one swing of the bat you
can win it all, overcoming limits imposed by the playing field itself. Making
technological innovations is very much like that.

------
dangerface
> Is it the historic innovation, American culture in general?

LOL no. Pretty much all European industry was destroyed by world ward 2, they
then had to buy from America and help improve their industry to beat the Nazi.
Not trying to belittle American contribution to ww2 which was obviously
massive just pointing out that America "lost" one harbour but pretty much
every European country lost pretty much every industry they had.

After ww2 America had an industry with loads of spending money, they innovated
while every one else was rebuilding. The rest of the world has been playing
catchup ever since with varying degrees of success.

Since Europeans, Americans and China are all as brainy as each other its
really hard to catch up unless you can make a sacrifice Americans cant for
example sacrifice your peasents as cheap labour. It looks like China will beat
America with this attitude, when it does will other countries adopt Chinas
"winning" attitude? or be left behind?

------
baroffoos
Large population also the fact that it is because it is. Lots of skilled
people in tech move to the US to work so more companies start there which
means more people move.

------
cdg7777
Govt investment:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo)

------
ThomPete
Because of the dominance of the US millitary coincided with the development of
the microchip.

------
djohnston
We made the tech industry

~~~
mastrsushi
We made the first tech industry

~~~
thundergolfer
That's basically what "made the [X] industry" tends to mean.

~~~
mastrsushi
But someone could read that and think "the one and only". By stating the first
shows there's more potential.

~~~
djohnston
By that logic your question should have been " Why is the US the center of
this/a tech industry" :)

------
rramadass
The reasons are manifold.

Some are nicely summarized (factors leading up to the current
Political/Military/Economic domination) in a two-part Stratfor article;

1) The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 1: The Inevitable Empire -
[https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-
st...](https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-states-
part-1-inevitable-empire)

2) The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 2: American Identity and the
Threats of tomorrow. - [https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-
united-st...](https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-
states-part-2-american-identity-and-threats-tomorrow)

The way i look at it is (in no particular order);

Luck - WW2 decimated almost all developed countries. The US "home" was
untouched (no war on their soil) thus leaving them as the sole
industrial/military powerhouse with resources intact. This is actually a huge
factor and the current state follows directly from here. They also
appropriated a lot of Scientists/Technologies from the losers which gave them
the needed headstart in many tech areas.

People psyche - The country was founded by immigrants who basically had to do
whatever to "survive". Since they had no history in the new land, they were
not bogged down by crystallized cultural norms and beliefs. Thus the focus on
"Capitalism"(euphemism for Greed and "do whatever it takes to win") and
"Hustle" (not always driven by Ethics/Morals contrary to what their leaders
may claim). This setup their current culture where their desire is to be THE
global hegemon by any means necessary. If you think about it, this is a great
motivator for just about anything.

Geography - Covered well in the above articles. This allowed them to develop
independently of detrimental external influences.

Control of World Economy - By forcing everybody to use $ as the world's
currency. The ramifications of this is all-encompassing.

Military/Education/Industrial Complex - This is a crucial nexus which is
directly responsible for much of their dominance in the technology domain. The
Military funds "Blue Sky" projects in close association with Academia and the
Industry. Because of this close-knit setup, the path from Ideation to Realized
Implementation is very fast and seamless. No other country does this as well.
Because of the "Power Law", progress in Technology is accelerated leading to
being the natural front-runner.

Finally, it should be clear that "Military Dominance" is used to enforce
"Economic Dominance" and vice-versa.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
Not to mention the sheer size and abundance of natural resources in America.

~~~
rramadass
Covered under "Geography" above. The Stratfor articles elaborate nicely on
this.

------
tlb
Such broad questions don't usually lead to high-quality discussions. It's
better to submit articles presenting a point of view on the topic.

