As a materialist, I am not particularly taken by this particular argument (which is not to say that I would summarily reject other arguments to the same end.)

It's weakness, I think, is in the claim that the United States has all the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as characteristic of conscious beings.

If you favor some form of panpsychism (especially in the form that, for example, regards buildings with thermostats as conscious), I imagine you are probably well-disposed to this view, but if, like me, you feel that this is an unhelpful generalization that equivocates over some important differences between thermostats and self-aware organisms, then the problem with the author's thesis is that we do not really know what it is about the latter that is truly characteristic of conscious beings in a causal sense.

Here's an analogy: amyloid plaques seem to be characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, but we don't know if they are a cause, a consequence, an epiphenomenon or even just coincidental, so we cannot assume that a treatment clearing the plaques would cure the disease.

Therefore, I don't hold out much hope for the argument presented here contrubuting much towards our understanding of the causal mechanisms of self-aware consciousness.