More because Europe had just spent half a decade murdering each other on a massive scale, and there wasn't much energy left for basic research for a little while after experiencing a couple dozen megadeaths and the various urban remodeling programs that accompanied them.
Europe has had many decades since then to innovate in technology and they have still not done so. They are almost completely dependent on American and Asian tech. And that is not changing anytime soon.
So yes, it had something to do with WWII, but that's not the only reason.
For instance, Japan and South Korea were both equally devastated and yet they both managed to build world class technology industries in the aftermath.
> Europe has had many decades since then to innovate in technology and they have still not done so. They are almost completely dependent on American and Asian tech. And that is not changing anytime soon.
You are stating that like this has been the state of things for a century. The dependence on American and Asian tech has been a gradual process, that accelerated in the 1990s and 2000s. Before that time, every European countries had their own tech industries able to compete with the tech giants (Nokia, Siemens, Grundig, Alcatel, Thomson, Olivetti, Philips, Ericsson, Amstrad and that's only citing a few of the ones that marked history forever, only in the field consumer electronics, a lot of them back in the day were competing but ended up fading away, and also others were everywhere in the tech industry before without being really exposed to consumers).
The actual valuable technology is the EUV light source tech developed in California by an American company that ASML acquired in 2013 under a strict technology export agreement with the US government. It was not developed in Europe.
The light source tech was pivotal, but the supply chain mastery of 100,000 parts and patience to invest "200 billion dollars" in development over decades is deserves massive respect for the Europeans, no? This effort did not start in 2013.
The technology itself is researched and developed in San Diego. ASML in the Netherlands is just the assembler of the final machines. That's not the particularly valuable part of the product pipeline.
Doesn't seem ironic at all, when the website (as nearly all are) is fundamentally dependent on a technical stack invented by the United States government to be accessed.
No, this is false. Many of the people mentioned were born here.
Chang came because of education and stayed because of communist oppression and lack of opportunity at home. As racist as Texas was at the time, it was still better than going back to China, which is why he stayed.
Andy Grove endured the Nazis in Europe and the was almost killed by the Communists in Europe. His mother was raped and hunted by both. Tell me again why he came for the taxes?
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. We were large enough that we could find the talent, and the country was free enough so that private industry could drive innovation. Low taxes let companies reinvest. We know this is what happened because the success of free markets isn't a mystery, it's well studied and documented.