[908B64B197]

> many of the really successful countries (Russia, Hungary, Romania, Iran) aren't very rich

While the US could use (homebuilt) computers to solve engineering issues, the Russians had to resort to manual calculations. The eastern block always lagged behind in terms of computing.

> Does that happen?

All the time.

Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones bennefiting from a brain drain of americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreing talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT.

It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were.

The top destination for top tier UK scientists and researchers is the US. [0]

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

[inglor_cz]

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain and yes, computational power was sorely lacking. Calculators were sold on the black market for enormous money.

But despite this fact, actual maths was on a high level both in the satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union itself. Notably, translated Soviet mathematical textbooks are still rather popular in the Anglosphere among people who want to dive into higher mathematics deeply.

Some of those books were literally written at the same time when ordinary Soviet citizens queued for food.