> I think the world got used to us being patsies where we spend our money on R&D paying foreigners

I can tell you're not in the business of training / employing people.

The best ROI is getting someone who is already trained (read you didn't pay for their K-12, their parents' teaching/maternity/healthcare) and just deriving value from their labor.

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mc32 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Leading a nation is not a business. In order to have a successful and self sustaining population we need to develop our own human capital. You want to take shortcuts —those are fine when you’re playing catch up, not when you’re in the lead. Also, it’s a governments responsibility to support and cultivate its own population and not dispose them for another population.

	▲	bonsai_spool 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Absolutely true about creating talent. That does not mean you shouldn't take advantage of the easy talent available to you. Please don't pretend like hiring scientists for a national lab has any effect on the colossal waste of human talent our nation is perpetrating—the problems begin so much earlier, and holding out for another American scientist at a national lab is doing nothing to address the ridiculous state of our human capital development.