When Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China recently, it wasn’t for ceremonial handshakes or photo ops. It was a mission rooted in urgency. In his own words, Cook admitted: in the entire United States, he can find only a handful of engineers with the expertise he needs. In China, there are thousands.
This is not simply a story about educational budgets. The U.S. spends a higher percentage of its GDP on education than China does — over 5% compared to China’s 4%. But quantity does not equal quality. America’s education system funnels resources toward the top few percent, nurturing a narrow elite while neglecting broad technical competence. China, by contrast, focuses on raising the general level of education, especially in the hard sciences and engineering, creating a deep bench of skilled professionals.
The results are transforming industries.
Driverless taxis already navigate the streets of major Chinese cities, while American companies like Tesla are still struggling to perfect autonomous driving — and now face massive technical setbacks, like replacing chips in millions of cars.
China’s private space sector, once nonexistent, now counts five successful commercial rocket companies. Meanwhile, in the U.S., even aerospace giants like Boeing are desperate for engineering talent, competing with SpaceX’s near-monopoly on the best minds.
The semiconductor industry offers another stark example. Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, building its first plant in the U.S., planned to hire thousands of American engineers. But the lack of qualified candidates forced them to import workers from abroad — a move made even before cultural and organizational clashes exposed deeper problems.
Perhaps most telling is the race to the Moon. China’s plan for a crewed lunar mission by 2030 seems increasingly viable, while NASA’s Artemis program, once aiming for 2024, remains mired in delays.
The pattern is clear: countries that fail to cultivate large, skilled engineering workforces are slipping behind — not just in technology, but in global influence.
The U.S. will undoubtedly continue to lure foreign talent aggressively. But unless nations invest in robust, broad-based technical education — not just elite universities, but solid engineering training for the many — they will find themselves sidelined in the post-globalization world.
In the new era, it won’t be ideology or military power that decides leadership. It will be who has the engineers.