Part of my worldview is that progress, innovation and competence in all areas of science, technology, and other aspects of civilization are correlated. Societies that are dynamic and competent in one area, such as physics research, will also be dynamic and competent in other areas, such as infrastructure and good governance.

What would the world look like if that hypothesis were false? Well, we could find a country that is not particularly competent overall, but was very competent and innovative in one specific civilizational subfield. As a random example, imagine it turned out that Egypt actually had the world's best research and technology in the field of microbiology. Or we might observe that Indonesia had the best set of laws, courts, and legal knowledge. Such observations would falsify my hypothesis.

If the theory is true, then the fact that the US still seems innovative in CS-related fields is probably a transient anomaly. One obvious thing that could derail American innovation is catastrophic social turmoil.

Optimists could accept the civilizational competence correlation idea, but believe that US competence in areas like infotech is going to "pull up" our performance in other areas, at which we are presently failing abjectly.