When I was a kid my school had a computer lab worth 200k in 1995 dollars. This was something very few kids had outside of the United States. None of them were locked down and we were encouraged to learn how to program them. Now we just throw some locked down $200 Chrome books at them and think that's gonna produce the next generation of tech innovation. In any case I wasn't talking about free as in commie.

In 1995 you didn’t have: raspberry anything, flipper zero, qemu, commodity smartphones, mail-order circuit board fab—-and that’s just the stuff under $200.

I think I missed what this annecdote means. Lots of countries had computers in 1995. I also don't understand what you mean by "not free as in commie". Do you mean soft power, we already get that, do you mean something other than resources (what money ultimately is)?