Futurist Jim Carroll<p>Megatrend **#27** - "By abandoning its R&D leadership, the US is ceding the future of global innovation and success to its competitors." - Futurist Jim Carroll</p><p>(Futurist Jim Carroll is writing a series on 30 Megatrends, which he first outlined in his book Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times. The trends were shared in the book as a way of demonstrating that, despite any period of economic volatility, there is always long-term opportunity to be found. The book is now in print - learn more at dancing.jimcarroll.com)</p><p>This is a LONG post.</p><p>And yet, as one of the most consequential trends of our time, it deserves the attention it gets. You can't write about the biggest trends of the coming decade without acknowledging the massive reversal that is the US right now.</p><p>It pains me to write this, but it's pretty clear the United States is accelerating its retreat from global R&D leadership through unprecedented 2025 policy reversals and funding cuts in critical sectors like biomedical science, climate technology, and electric vehicles. In stark contrast, competitor nations are executing ambitious, state-directed industrial strategies to capture dominance in future technologies, fundamentally redrawing the global innovation map and challenging America's long-held technological hegemony.</p><p>What does it mean? Oh boy, this is a complicated post. I don't expect I have many followers in the 'other' camp, so let's go back to the post I wrote in 2017, which predicted, with stunning accuracy, where we find ourselves today. "What Comes Next with the Decline of an Empire" took my futurist's mind and applied it to what I saw happening. The original post can be found here. The updated PDF analysis of my predictions, found below, can be found here.</p><p><a href="https://pdf.jimcarroll.com/AmericasRetreat-2017to2025.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">pdf.jimcarroll.com/AmericasRet</span><span class="invisible">reat-2017to2025.pdf</span></a></p><p>Let's start this post - "America's Retreat" - by examining my 2017 predictions in the light of where we are today in 2025.</p><p>I fed each prediction to Google Gemini, asking it to reflect upon its accuracy. My original prediction is printed verbatim.</p><p>So overall, how did I do?</p><p>Sadly, all too well. 9 of the 10 predictions were entirely accurate. As Google notes, "Carroll's predictions about the shifting global landscape proved to be remarkably prescient."</p><p>So what are the implications of this type of retreat? Let's dig in further. I took a look at how this will accelerate the global innovation power shift.</p><p><a href="https://pdf.jimcarroll.com/Megatrend26-AmericasRetreat.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">pdf.jimcarroll.com/Megatrend26</span><span class="invisible">-AmericasRetreat.pdf</span></a></p><p>How bad is it? Pretty bad.</p><p>**<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Innovation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Innovation</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/R" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>R</span></a>**&D **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Capital" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Capital</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Funding" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Funding</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Research" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Research</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Technology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Technology</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Investment" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Investment</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Democratization" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Democratization</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Global" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Global</span></a>** **<a href="https://mastodon.futurist.info/tags/Future" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Future</span></a>**</p><p>Original post: <a href="https://jimcarroll.com/2025/08/decoding-tomorrow-30-megatrends-27-americas-retreat-by-abandoning-its-rd-leadership-the-us-is-ceding-the-future-of-global-innovation-and-success-to-its-competitors/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">jimcarroll.com/2025/08/decodin</span><span class="invisible">g-tomorrow-30-megatrends-27-americas-retreat-by-abandoning-its-rd-leadership-the-us-is-ceding-the-future-of-global-innovation-and-success-to-its-competitors/</span></a></p>