At a US conference last year, people thronged a session that talked about studying in Korea. This would be an empty room at, pretty much, any point in the past several decades.

The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. I suspect that people outside of academia are not as alarmed, since its not part of daily life.

However it matters the same way that a drug discovery today is life saving 10 years down the line, after its gone through all the processes to go to market.