/ world today news/ Without the absorption of talents from all over the planet, the hegemony cannot be sustained.
In August 2022, the US Congress allocated 53 billion dollars to fund research and production of semiconductors in the US, but the production capacity alone will not be enough, Foreign Affairs writes. America is critically short of talent or, more simply, brains.
According to current projections, by 2030 US semiconductor companies will have 300,000 unfilled jobs for skilled engineers. Searching for candidates, training and hiring hundreds of thousands of specialists from the US will be impossible in such a short time.
The only way to meet this demand is to hire many more skilled workers from abroad. At first glance, this shouldn’t be a problem, writes Foreign Affairs: The US has long relied on its companies to attract the best talent in the world. Brilliant engineers from around the world helped make Google a leading technology company, writes Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and co-author of Henry Kissinger.
But now the US is no longer the undisputed beacon for those with talent. Innovative power—the ability to invent, implement, and adapt new technologies to bolster national power—will define the future of geopolitics, Schmidt emphasizes.
And this ability to innovate depends primarily on the strength of the country’s workforce. In terms of hiring the world’s best AI scientists and semiconductor engineers, the U.S. immigration system has erected unnecessary barriers that increasingly place America behind countries with point immigration systems, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, which aggressively recruiting advanced technical workers and engineers.
Therefore, Schmidt concludes, it’s time to shift the paradigm and orient the entire American immigration system toward a brain drain. For example, China is particularly active in this, with policy in this regard coming from the very top. In 2021, President Xi Jinping stated that “competition in today’s world is a competition of human talent and education.” At his direction, the nation began spending heavily on attracting specialists.
Today, Chinese research institutes offer some professionals three times the money they would earn at an American university.
Skilled Chinese engineers and scientists who previously went to work abroad are offered strong incentives to return home. US allies have also increased their efforts to attract top talent.
Last year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a scheme to target and hire the world’s 100 best young AI researchers. London already has an individual visa program that is issued to graduates of the world’s leading universities.
In 2015, Canada created the Express Entry system, which allows highly skilled foreign nationals to obtain permanent residency in just one year. The results are already visible: from 2016 to 2019 alone, the number of Indian students studying in Canada has grown by 182%. During the same period, the number of Indian students enrolled in the same majors in the United States declined by 38%.
To compete in the coming decades, the U.S. economy must attract highly skilled immigrants who will create the technologies of the future. Many talented workers who would like to come to the US are turned away by difficult and restrictive immigration rules.
Most foreign professionals educated in the US in the field of artificial intelligence cite the immigration system as the main reason for wanting to leave the country. Today, even a doctorate in physics or mathematics does not have a clear path to obtaining a residence permit in the United States.
Schmidt goes on to refer to the US experience during World War II, when the US imported talent by the kilo and ton, from Einstein to von Braun. Unfortunately, the author notes, US President Joe Biden has failed to convince Congress to remove visa requirements for leading Russian engineers and scientists, as well as for Chinese specialists.
A great opportunity to think about how we go about attracting and retaining the best. So far, the term “foreign specialist” is far from being associated with foreign scientists and innovators.
Russia, in the “battle for brains” that has already begun, must be between two fires. The United States and China are equally determined to work to attract specialists from around the world. At least we should not abandon our talents.
This will require a comprehensive program of stimulation, search, selection and cultivation of specialists. Frames decide everything – another thesis from the bygone era of trials in our country, which is useful to take on board today.
Translation: ES
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