The Lorax Who Spoke for the Nerds
Thneeds Are Not What Everyone Needs
Maybe Craig Barrett’s testimony before Congress would have landed harder if he’d opened with, “I am the Lorax and I speak for the nerds.”
He didn’t. Barrett was a Stanford-trained materials scientist, Intel’s CEO and Chairman, testifying before the House Science Committee in 2007. He was measured and precise: without investment in STEM education, research, and immigration reform, America would lose its innovation edge.
Congress had heard this before.
A Nation at Risk warned in 1983 that the “educational foundations of our society” were eroding. By then, the problem was already decades old. In 1964, American students ranked 11th of 12 in international math. In 1973, they ranked last in science. By the mid-1980s, they were at or near the bottom in biology and chemistry. The message never changed.
Our response: speeches, commissions, requirements, funding cycles.
Louisiana pays Brian Kelly a $54 million buyout not to coach football.
Meanwhile, teachers in Louisiana earn, on average, $56,000 a year.
We built the appearance of caring, not capability.
We didn’t make teaching attractive enough to staff STEM classrooms. We didn’t build a domestic engineering pipeline. We didn’t reform immigration to keep the foreign students we trained. We didn’t invest in the trades that advanced manufacturing requires.
Instead, we confused testing with education. No Child Left Behind cut science instruction to minutes a day. Race to the Top spent billions without measurable impact. Each decade produced a new initiative. None built capacity.
Alarm, theater, amnesia.
Repeat.
By 2007, nothing had changed. By 2022, American 15-year-olds ranked 26th in math on PISA; about one-third were at or below basic skill level, unable to do things like compare distances or convert prices reliably. U.S. math performance hit its lowest recorded scores even as the country’s relative ranking rose only because others fell further.
We’ve never led.
We’ve never caught up.
China now produces roughly four times as many STEM graduates as the United States. In the U.S., foreign-born talent carries the load: about three-quarters of semiconductor PhDs are foreign-born; roughly 43% of doctorate-level scientists and engineers are foreign-born; only around 41% of foreign STEM PhDs stay after graduation. The result is an annual loss on the order of tens of thousands of advanced engineers.
And now, as the U.S. tries to build semiconductor fabs with CHIPS Act money, it is discovering it does not have the people to build or staff them. Fabs need pipefitters, HVAC techs, electricians, welders and other skilled tradespeople. The American Welding Society projects a shortage of hundreds of thousands of welders in the next few years; about 94% of construction firms report difficulty finding skilled craft workers. TSMC’s Arizona plant has already been delayed in part over a lack of qualified local tradespeople.
Industry estimates suggest that 67,000 of roughly 115,000 new U.S. semiconductor jobs could go unfilled by 2030.
The warnings weren’t abstract. They were operational.
For sixty years, the United States heard them. For sixty years, it signaled concern instead of building capacity.
Craig Barrett was one of the Lorax who spoke for the nerds.
We didn’t listen.
And now we need more nerds.
But warnings are ignored because of a deeper stubbornness, the kind that stops two travelers in the Prairie of Prax.
More to follow. Next week.