Sean M Everett

On 60 Minutes Sunday evening, one of the stories was about a Chinese company that makes the equipment for our 4G cellular networks in the US and how our reliance on them can create a national security threat.  

I’m not going to delve into politics in this post, but the thought I had when they mentioned all of the equipment for these wireless networks are made by 3 foreign countries is that we’re becoming slaves.

Not only do we rely on foreign oil for our energy source, but we now rely on foreign technology for our communication source.

And my mind immediately raced to a simplified conclusion. Because the Baby Boomer generation is now the biggest voting contingent of the American population, politicians and therefore legislation will be focused more on healthcare for the elderly than education for the young.

And the moment that happens is the moment that we’ve begun playing defense in an offense-critical world.

Like the Iowa Hawkeye football team, if you go into the 4th quarter up by 10 and start playing it safe, you’ve got a 97% chance of losing.

Don’t get me wrong, healthcare should be available for everyone. But maybe we should focus more on making education cheaper than healthcare. Or maybe paying teachers more than doctors.

Because motivating a young mind to study mathematics and science for the rest of his/her life is likely the single hardest thing to do on this planet. 

I’ll prove it to you.

Our current school system rewards memorization (i.e., what year did George Washington die?) over problem solving (i.e., what color was George Washington’s white horse?). And it’s the latter that separates us from supercomputers.

So solve this problem:

How do we stop our reliance on foreign energy and communication?