America’s Self-Inflicted Tech Reckoning

America is in trouble, and it’s mostly our own fault.

For years, we’ve been getting tougher on Chinese tech companies – banning apps like TikTok and stopping companies from doing business with China. But this isn’t because we’re strong. It’s because we finally realized how weak we’ve become.

Here’s the biggest problem: We don’t make our own computer chips anymore. These tiny chips power everything – your phone, your car, military weapons, you name it. But instead of making them here, we let other countries do it because it was cheaper.

Now most of the world’s most important chips are made in Taiwan, a small island that China wants to take over. If China grabs Taiwan, we’re in serious trouble. The U.S. military only has about four months’ worth of the advanced chips it needs for weapons. After that, we’d basically be defenseless.

Think about it: The country that invented the computer chip now has to beg other countries to make them for us. That’s like inventing the car but then having to buy all your cars from someone who doesn’t like you.

But on the contrary, being cut off from China might force us to get our act together. If American companies can’t buy cheap stuff from China anymore, they’ll have to build factories here and hire American workers. This could bring back good manufacturing jobs and make us more innovative as we figure out how to make things ourselves again.

The problem with that is that Americans want to chase the American dream of at least $150k salaries, and we might end up begging all the immigrants who were forcibly kicked out to come back and work for a decent wage in factories.

The whole world is being forced to choose between America and China for their technology. Some countries, like Singapore, are saying “We don’t want our people’s information stored on computers in other countries.” This makes it much harder and more expensive for big American tech companies like Google and Facebook to operate around the world.

Imagine if every country required you to have a separate bank account there before you could do business. That’s basically what’s happening with technology.

For decades, China has been stealing American technology and ideas. We basically shrugged and said “That’s just how business works.” Now we’re finally saying “Stop stealing our stuff” and doing something about it.

It’s like if someone kept copying your homework for years, and you finally told the teacher.

So the final question is: Can America fix the mess it created? We ignored this problem for so long that now we’re scrambling to catch up. We’re trying to use taxes, trade restrictions, and government spending to rebuild our tech industry. Yet, we have billionaires who are more concerned with putting humans on Mars.

It’s a risky bet. We might succeed and become stronger than ever. Or we might fail and fall even further behind.

Either way, the days of assuming we’ll always be the world’s top technology power are over. We have to earn it back – and that starts with admitting we messed up in the first place.