I've met Steve on a number of occasions, smart guy. I also work in this space and have definitely read a lot of the same books he has, along with many of his excellent articles. Alas, I'm pretty sure he would never read my articles, unless he got cancer, which I hope he doesn't.

I do want to pick up where he left off: the interface between the US and China, and specifically look at how China has invested. I've spent some effort on this forum making the point that our system has left some critical vulnerabilities that the Chinese have leveraged, e.g. (1,2).

It's worth understanding that Xi Jinping has been working hard on this problem set, along with his predecessors and many around him for a long time. To really understand his whole-of-economy approach, I highly recommend Hank Paulson's Dealing with China (3). He has and maintains a narrative of literally going from a boy in a cave to the leader of the largest nation on Earth. Much like the narrative arc Churchill maintained for himself (the Prof Blank mentions), Xi would see science as a component of the tapestry, but not the whole story.

Xi is also using the Belt and Road Initiative for massive effect, see the maps in (4). The US has started to pay attention with renewed investments in the region, e.g. (5) but Xi has a decade head start and a political base that could be characterized as relatively stable compared to the current US administration.

As my time is limited, I'm appending a reading list at the end for those interested (6 to end). Suffice to say, yes this is how we became a science superpower. But it ignores how our parochial incentives and belief in American exceptionalism morphed in the American narcissism (14).