However, are you sure that these advances would not have been made if the US had a different system? Like I argued before, Europe has pretty much copied the system by now but I don't see much in terms of catching up. Take A.I., for instance: completely dominated by the U.S. and China. Europe?
Like in many things in life, copying someone else's successful model is by no means a guarantee that you're going to be successful too. Why? Because your circumstances are usually completely different from whatever you're copying.
DeepMind?
They certainly didn't pick it for the food ;)
I think if you look at where the researchers are, Europe does really well. As per usual though, this is poorly commercialised.
This would seem to militate against a notion that Europe doesn't do AI.
Now, Europe definitely doesn't commercialise AI well, but that's a different point.
As for the 90%, agree, that's where I found that number. But do the exercise of listing all the major technological advances you can think of that mattered on the XX century, and I think you will likely end up close to that.
In any event, I think this is all getting rather silly. I was simply making the point that historically science in the US has benefited tremendously from having a large number of capable people that were trained within a different system. Where they were born is absolutely irrelevant. A certain W. von Braun was indeed an American, as were his 'major technological advances' that many in the US are rightly proud of, but he was very much a product of German science (I hope you don't find this point controversial).
In Mathematics the big highlights of the XX century: the Hilbert Program, the Bourbaki group, computability,the FLT solution were mainly made outside the US.
First satellite? First man in space? USSR
Europe was a big contributor to the first computers: Colossus, Zuse's Z2.
The Germans were pioneers in rocketry and ballistics as it is sadly very well known by the rest of the work.
In Biology: Watson, Crick, Monod,Ian Wilmut,Maynar-Smith made fantastic and foundational contributions
Medicine? Antibiotics,discovery of tetanus vaccine, immunological agents, vitamins, all made outside of the US.
That's not to say that American has not make fantastic contributions, The Apollo program, the invention of the transistor, the invention of the Internet are highlights of American ingenuity and glorious gifts to the rest of the world.
But pretending that all good science is made only in the US and the rest of the world in some sort of scientific backwater is just a sad indictment of the American educational system that formed you.