For much of the past century, in both the United States and elsewhere, the inexorable trend has been for people to move from rural areas and towns to ever larger cities, particularly those with vibrant downtown cores such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and dozens of other iconic American cities.

It is astonishing that in 2025, decades after socialism’s intellectual and practical collapse, America finds itself debating whether Washington should own a piece of Intel.

For all the obsessive nattering and nail-biting about artificial intelligence replacing lawyers, call-center workers, or copywriters—even policy analysts!—the bigger possible impact should be welcomed by all: cracking the frontiers of science.