Also, smarts needed to bootstrap modern infrastructure from scratch with limited resources are different than smarts needed to design a popular app, for example.
Americans built modern infrastructure with our limited 'average' brains.
Should be simple for actual smart people.
Having worked with everyone over the course of my life from PhDs to construction workers, I'm going to have to hard disagree on this one. Just because someone is gifted in one area, does not mean their intelligence or domain expertise applies everywhere. Domain expertise is a real thing.
It's about maximizing your potential, and being in the best environment to do so. Building up that capacity might sound nice in theory, but in practice, you go where you can to get the best results possible.
They just happened to all be super smart at coding Java?
Or, there's risk to being in their home country where academic freedom might not really be a thing.
it's like why if you show serious promise in soccer at a young age, you go to Europe as soon as you can - you will be better developed there in a more mature environment as opposed to, say, the USA where you can only get decent coaching in a few major cities, and even then the gulf between the coaching at a top Spanish or English club versus an American one is huge. Or if you show promise in tennis at a young age, you get your ass to Florida as soon as you are able to.