How the U.S. Engineered Its Sovereignty | Hacker News Reader

How the U.S. Engineered Its Sovereignty

spectrum.ieee.org

52 pointsrbanffy59 comments

In 1939 the US had an outdated navy, army, and air corps. European instability is the direct cause of the change in US military and economic dominance.

It helped that US soil was barely touched during both WW.

it helped that the US was an unspoiled economic powerhouse akin to China today.

the rest of the world annihilated itself while basically nothing happened on US soil, Pearl Harbor & Aleutian Islands notwithstanding

One of my favorite historical fun facts was that despite the Wright brothers flying the first place in 1903, at the start of WW1, the US was completely incapable of building an airplane and had to buy them from France and Great Britain. Why? Because of patent wars [1].

The net effect of that was that Congress had to intervene and they created an avionics patent pool, a system that persists to this day.

So whenever anyone says that patents foster innovation, just look at this or any number of historical counterexamples.

As for WW2, the causes were historical. The US was still suffering from the aftereffects of the Great Depression and American isolationism. It's worth noting that there was a lot of sympathy towards Nazi Germany in the US with the American Bund Party who had a rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939 [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...

idk, maybe being on an isolated continent really helped

I would consider Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean to certainly exist, and which formerly were British and Spanish colonies.

The US has actively suppressed any development in countries that could become competitors or non-aligned regional powers. Think Chile, Argentina, and Brazil (at least twice).

Argentina and Brazil do that to themselves

Chile actually signed very lucrative trades deals with the US and serve as a stark contrast to their next door neighbours

> Chile actually signed very lucrative trades deals with the US and serve as a stark contrast to their next door neighbours

Sure. Totally worth torturing some people and throwing them off helicopters. Class move.

Brazil and Argentina also tortured and killed some people, except they got nothing in return.

I don't think that the corporations and the government would allow a cell phone manufacturer or operating system to be developed that wasn't under their control.

Honestly, this is just a bad article.

The history of engineering in the USA is actually SUPER important. The article touches on some restrictions the British imposed on their colonies, but it goes much further. The fight for 'Sovereignty' took a long time and was almost never certain.

I HIGHLY recommend the Yale lecture series. They're not engineering-specific, unfortunately. But still really, really, good (I mean... it's Yale)

The Revolution with Professor Freeman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shTBSGoYtK0&list=PLDA2BC5E78...

America at 250 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TNcFQiqHGw&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...

The Civil War and Reconstruction with David Blight - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXXp1bHd6gI&list=PL5DD220D6A...

"In 1839 [...] the United States had already defeated Britain’s navy in two wars"

This statement is wrong and trivially falsifiable. Perhaps the author meant that the U.S. had by that point won some naval battles against the British?

yeah, it's worded strangely; as if both conflicts were exclusively/divisively maritime.

Which is a shame because the role of the Colonial Navy and later the U.S. Navy in the war of independence and later in the War of 1812 is actually fascinating and often overlooked

John Paul Jones, for example had an amazing (as in interesting, not 'goodly') life ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones )

And the Battle of Lake Erie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Erie

I completely fail to recall that time we burned down Buckingham Palace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

We did flex quite a bit on lesser powers, though, even in the 1800s. The US Navy was infamously rebuilt after the revolution to fight a war against Tripoli.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars

Before the end of the century we'd fought a hundred or so largely forgotten wars. Who remembers that time we invaded Korea? No, the other one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_expedition_to_Ko...

Or Fiji? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1858_Fiji_expedition

Or New Orleans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811_German_Coast_uprising

Some nationalistic articles are just cringe.

Remenber that nationalism if based on 2 things:

- Hating people you don't know

- Being proud of things you didn't do

Kinda glossed over the whole IP theft industrial espionage thing.

Not at all ironic given the shrieking about China.

Back then there weren’t as many conventions and treaties governing IP, as one might imagine —which is why the British attempted export controls!

I guess the same goes for why the Americans attempt export controls in 2026

Every successful country has done it. First they make liberal use of others' IP then when they are generating IP themselves they try hard to protect it.

Not limited to IP, they also do this with real property when they can.

Not limited to property, they do this with every single regulation. Think about Europe and chlorinated chicken.

For 150 years after its independence the US was the land of progress by toil, sweat an innovation...

...then they invented the money printer and it all became lies, bribes and plunder

tbf, it's not like the toil and sweat wasn't partly the toil and sweat of the slaves.

I guess it's time for some jingoistic rewriting of history. If you want to sum up America's rise to power it's the slave trade, war and a healthy dose of luck (eg the Louisiana Purchase).

There is a concerted attempt to rewrite history on slavery. You will hear things like "slavery was an economic drain" or "slavery was inefficient" or even "it was technology like the cotton gin that created wealth, not slavery". All of it's nonsense [1].

It's true that industrialization (particularly the railroad ans mass production of steel) was a huge driver in the mid-19th century but what really kicked the US into high gear was war [2].

It's true that material conditions and real wages started stagnating in the 1970s but this piece writes that off as Wall Street shenanigans. This was a political goal to break organized labor. We had McKinsey producing reports to argue that executives were "underpaid" [3]. The post-war era went from a marginal tax rate of 91% and the CEO to median worker ratio went from 21:1 in 1965 to 351:1 in the 2020s [4]. But also the post-war economy shifted from housing being a utility to being a speculative asset. The median house price went from $18,000 to $26,000 between 1953 and 1973 (in nominal terms) [5] and decreased in real terms. And, well, we know what's happened since.

But what's less well-known is the link between money going into housing and decline in manufacturing. That's not an accident. Why invest money and run a factory when sitting on a house produces a 7%+ real returns that are government-protected?

As for the whole "right to repair" bit for tractors and the like, yeah, companies engage in rent-seeking behavior in a capitalist mode of production. Film at 11.

[1]: https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-shows-slaverys-cent...

[2]: https://laraballard.substack.com/p/how-the-us-became-the-wor...

[3]: https://observer.com/2013/08/the-godfather-of-ceo-megapay-mc...

[4]: https://x.com/RBReich/status/1575516013009018880

[5]: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

This article is cherry picked nonsense.

It's a 4 minute read.

is that meant as a response?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com