Irony aside, I have argued in the past, and I will argue that some innovations from Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple (GAFA) are not exclusively done in Silicon Valley (or Shenzhen, when it comes to hardware).
I have seen a team of engineers, all trained for free by a French university, have a meeting, in French, with senior executive of a French group (from the same university) about a software tool they wanted to implement; the suggestion that came out was based on algorithms developed by engineers and scientists working within a joint program between a large state-owned industrial group and French universities.
I would add that said alumni all were generously paid during their study, but that would identify the university. Not the program, or the algorithm, though. And that’s the rub: it happens all the time.
Added value to GAFA: billions.
Money that the French government put into the program: dozens of million directly; billions if you include maintaining generations of engineers up to date.
Money that the French government is going to get from that: zilch.
And all the engineers, senior of not, are very proud to have benefited from those program. This is their identity, literally: they introduce themselves using the common formula First name, Last name, University, Graduation year.
To have those executive remain silent internally is sickening.