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If another country were plan well, they could create opportunities that would attract and welcome the smart people from the US and elsewhere. If they made it economically attractive to tech businesses, they could set themselves up as a dominant leader of the world within 20-30 years, regardless of their current size.

I don't know enough about Estonia to suggest they would try this, but they do seem progressive in this regard. I would vote for Netherlands, Belgium, or Portugal just because I like being in those countries.



That's not actually realistic, for the exact same reason why China is such a juggernaut in tech while having almost no human rights. If it worked the way you're implying, China wouldn't be able to do what it's doing in tech at all.

Things like this don't even remotely threaten US dominance in tech, because: 1) the US allows a lot of legal immigration; 2) US tech wages are far beyond anything you can make in those other locations 3) the US as a singular integrated market that is the world's largest economy, makes it impossible to compete with unless you're China, due to inherent scaling benefits 4) nowhere other than China has the capital markets to support competing with the US start-up scene properly and 5) the actual context - Andreas was let go after three hours, with his devices - isn't close to being bad enough to matter, in fact it barely registers these days (increasingly the era of domestic surveillence and censorship all around the world, from the UK to South Korea) as a very mild inconvenience on human rights, and doesn't impact ~99.999% of travelers to the US.

US dominance in tech - outside of China - has only increased since 9/11, not decreased. That's despite non-stop issues of this sort, the Patriot Act, NSA spying, and so on. A rogue border search, or a hundred of them, won't dent that. That's the reality.




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