No no, the kind of talking point that I was sarcastically referring to was one that kept surfacing in reaction to news suggesting that China might surpass the USA in technology. Back then the HN reaction was "China just copies therefore they can't innovate". It's no the "they copy" bit that I'm talking about, it's what implication was being drawn from there.

That "therefore" is a negative and in my opinion more than anything shows that American has been leading the world for so long that they can't even conceive that might not be the case at some point in the future. Even people in tech who should be paying attention dismiss it by saying "nah, they can't really innovate, they're just copying, and therefore will never surpass us".

I guess time will tell.