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The Trump administration’s choice of Sriram Krishnan to serve as Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy made headlines this week. At issue is Krishnan’s support for H-1B. The topic has generated a buzz on X, with many wondering why Trump would engage the services of a man who supports bringing foreign tech workers into the country.

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Soon-to-be DOGE doyen Vivek Ramaswamy chimed in and found himself quickly ratioed. In a lengthy homily on X, Ramaswamy argued that the lack of native talent in the tech industry is due to the decline in American culture and the shift in focus away from achievement and toward the art of leisure. You can read the entire post below, but some highlights included:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

 A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

 A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

 Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

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Aside from the fact that Ramaswamy was dating himself with all the pop culture references, he did point out that such a time as this could be our “Sputnik moment.” He was referencing the moment when America realized that the Soviets had put a tiny satellite into orbit and that the country needed to get its collective backside in gear, or it could find itself in second place to the Russians when it came to the conquest of outer space. This, according to Ramaswamy, should be a clarion call for Americans to put their noses to the grindstone and shoulders to the wheel in the STEM fields.

I have some mixed feelings about Ramaswamy’s assertion. No one wants to see American jobs shunted off to H-1B workers. Some time ago, it was a nasty Disney secret that the Mouse gave an entire slate of American workers the boot on the condition that they train their foreign (and presumably cheaper) replacements if they wanted their severance. And big tech equals big donations. 

One must wonder if or how much Ramaswamy’s and Elon Musk’s endeavors have benefitted from H-1B workers. Those who believe that the new administration should make American jobs a priority are well within their rights to question the appointment of Krishnan, no matter how proudly they fly their Trump flags or wear their MAGA hats. Last I heard, conservatives were the ones in favor of free speech and vigorous debate.

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I do see Ramaswamy’s point. Back in the days when I hired and fired people, I would receive job applications that were often barely legible. And if I could somehow decipher the high school hieroglyphics, I rarely found someone who could string together a simple sentence. Everyone drops a comma or splits an infinitive now and then, but in some cases, I was not sure what I was reading. Of course, in the age of 245,368 genders, the issue of pronouns has pretty much been shot below the waterline. But the language had been foundering long before then. 

Education is an issue, but that is a column unto itself. If you have kept even a casual eye on the news, you know that in recent years, it has been filled with one story after another about schools, colleges, and universities that have become breeding grounds for social justice and sexual narcissism. 

That has been done at the expense of teaching students to read, write, and master basic math. America has heralded the rise of girls in STEM while essentially telling boys to pound sand. Then girls are convinced that they must live forever in a state of outrage and despair with useless degrees, while boys retreat to Halo or Call of Duty, knowing they will not be welcome in the public or even private sectors. Even the most driven of them may eventually give up:

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Having not been a parent for many years, I will leave it to those in the comment section to weigh in on the state of child-rearing in the nation. 

Even the government prefers sloth to industry. Back in 2010, while expounding on the glories of healthcare reform, Nancy Pelosi quipped to Rachel Maddow, “Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.” A little Huxley’s Soma with your coffee, anyone? 

Yes, the cost of healthcare is obscene, and following your bliss is a wonderful thing, but speaking as a writer, PJ Media is not my only stream of income. And I am certain that the number of aspiring artists far outstrips the number of successful ones. Bliss only pays so much, even in the best of economies.

Yes, there is the plague we have brought upon ourselves with smartphones and social media. But plenty of digital ink has been spilled on that. 

Take those factors and combine them with a housing market that is out of reach and prices that regularly hover in the vicinity of the Van Allen belt, and you have a recipe for a generation that has been set up to accomplish nothing and has come to terms with it. 

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Conversely, when someone with the requisite education, years of experience, and a track record of supporting a company’s vision is shown the gate because a CEO recognizes cheap labor when he sees it, or, as is increasingly the case, they are the wrong race, sex or age, who then do we blame for the national brain drain?

This is not necessarily an indictment of Musk or Ramaswamy, and America does need qualified workers in the tech industry. But H-1B will not solve America’s problems.