>>In fairness, the US has always done well harvesting the skills of foreign workers in pharmaceutical, chip design and other high-value services. Look at the quantity of patents researched in (say) Switzerland but owned by funding US interests and you'll see what I mean.
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>SNIP
>
>Exactly. There was a suggestion in Michael's post that technical innovation, at least in the computer field, has been the work of native born Americans and the only reason others are competing with us now is we have "given them" our technology. What a laugh.
>
>There is a fairly old joke that you have probably heard, which has a point to make besides being funny.
>
>Q: What is the language of science?
>A: Broken English.

Never heard it, but on a more practical analogy to "sharing your advantage with your adversaries" has a tendency to bite you in the ass...

There used to be a powerhouse football team that decided to start having instruction workshops on how to construct a weight room and incorporate strength training to develop your players. They did this for years and then slowly, the rest of the NCAA started to catch up, and then surpass what they had been taught. In case you can't guess, that team was Nebraska. This is well known within the state by those who follow the Big Red, and unfortunately, once you give away your advantage, you can't get it back unless you can come up with something better. Short answer... they can't.