Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these have companies with >10B USD of revenue, so it's not like the Chinese companies are any larger. And don't tell me, it's because of the difference between product and service companies, because that is meaningless distinction from the perspective of a hardware-marker. They all need hardware to run on and arguably a service company needs more.

> Considering the 'prestige' and money that comes with working in the US, I'd be very surprised if the country can ever accumulate enough talent to do anything fundamentally significant (esp. since all of the relevant Education/Industry is entirely Anglophone).

That was true maybe 10/20 years ago. Right now, thanks to Trump and Republicans, the US is much less attractive destination, especially for top-tier researchers. NSF funding rates are in the single digit percentage range, every year seems to see a new assault from state-level republicans on state university systems. Rising xenophobia and white nationalism obviously don't help the cause.

The situation in India is way better. There is more money available for research: the Shakti project is one example but many other big centers are being funded in various "institutes of national importance." There is a bi-partisan commitment to increasing funding and hiring for Indian research and there is a growing talent pool emerging from the non-IIT undergraduate colleges.

Twenty years ago, every R1 university in the US was better than every university in India. Now, once you get past the top-10 or 15, beyond the Berkeleys, MITs, Princetons and maybe Purdues, it's not at all clear that it is a good idea for a young assistant professor to go to say Virgina Tech over IISc or IIT Bombay. And in fact, these Indian institutes are consistently hiring people who would have been a shoo-in for a faculty position at places like VT.