America – Brown Pundits

Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A personal history of the Atomic Scientists

June 15, 2025NiveditaAmerica, Book Reviews, Scienceatomic weapons, physicists, Robert Jungk, scientists, war1 Comment

The issue of nuclear weapons, weighing on everyone’s mind given the latest Iran-Israel tensions as also the recent tensions between India-Pakistan and of course the Russia-Ukraine conflict, had me reaching out for this fantastic book to read once more.

The book Brighter than a Thousand Suns by Robert Jungk is a beautifully written history of the atomic scientists who were instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb. Of course, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most well known and the star of the show with the Manhattan Project. This book however traces the entire chronology of the events leading up to the race of making the first atom bomb from 1918 onwards. The author personally corresponded with most of the scientists and wrote up this magnum opus. One of my personal favourites by far.

Some poignant takeaways; quoting directly from the book:

“The international family of physicists has kept together to the best of their ability, at all events better than men of letters and intellectuals in other fields, who bombarded each other with spiteful manifestoes.

Physicists who has worked together before the war, often for years, either by correspondence or side by side in the laboratory, could never become enemies at a command from above.

During these years most zealous efforts were made by the Soviet Union to make contact with Western Scientists. The Bolshevist state not only wished its scientists to learn from those “out there”. It also took care to have its own publications translated into English, French and German. Even that dictatorial state, in those days, imposed no rule of secrecy or censorship upon the field of research”.

A lot of food for thought especially in the context of the evolving situations in the world today.

Everyone Western Becomes White Eventually

June 11, 2025June 11, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Blog, Civilisation, Culture, Politics, RaceAfrican-American resistance, America, Assimilation, Bhutan Lhotshampa, Blog, Civilisation, Cultural integration, Culture, diaspora dynamics, Ethnic enclaves, Global migration, Immigration, Indian diaspora, Individualism, Intergenerational change, Jewish assimilation, Politics, Race, Racial identity, Second-generation immigrants, Western civilisation, Whiteness18 Comments

brown: if the fresh inputs from india is reduced ( because of immigration laws and raising prosperity back home), how long can ‘indians in u s a’ remain an effective group? i feel that they will dissolve in next 20 years.

Nivedita: That is such an interesting take! I agree actually. Indians are pretty much white adjacent and are intermarrying with whites, so in all probability what you predict might actually happen.

That’s a sharp observation, and worth expanding. The truth is, in the West, all immigrants eventually become “white”—not in phenotype, but in assimilation, in aesthetic, in aspiration. Continue reading Everyone Western Becomes White Eventually

On immigration, innovation and the American conundrum

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025NiveditaAmerica, Culture, EconomicsAmerica, American decline, American exceptionalism, American IP, Asian immigration, Capitalism, Caste system, corporate greed, Culture, David Brooks, economics, entrepreneurship, failure tolerance, family unit, Gates, higher education, immigration trends, innovation, Jobs, manufacturing crisis, Nadella, Pichai, Protestant work ethic, Scott Galloway, Tiger Mom35 Comments

This is an attempt to understand why the United States began its descent into a mediocracy from a meritocracy. This article was inspired by a series of conversations over a period of time between my husband and me based on collective intergenerational experiences across a cross-section of people. I would also like to just say that this is in no way an attempt to undermine the success of immigrants, but more of an academic exercise to understand the joint impact of corporate greed and immigration patterns on the state of innovation in the US.

On the principle of collegiality and individual contribution to society at large

The principle on which the US was founded is this: The individual citizen is the basic building block of the country, and the quality of the individual dictates the future of the country (Teddy Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic, Sorbonne, France, 1910). The average citizen must be a good citizen for the republic to succeed. Therefore, every effort was made to ensure that a citizen could fulfill one’s full potential. This freedom to pursue one’s dreams was naturally predicated by the foundation of a relatively stable society where the basic necessities of life were well taken care of. While this respect for the individual citizen was of paramount importance, the same was also counter-balanced by the Protestant Christian principle of collegiality, which ensured that while individual citizens worked towards a better life, they also by and large pursued activities that could ensure the larger good of their society as well.

While the first wave of immigrants all came from western societies that shared similar principles, the latest wave of immigrants have come from countries where the individual citizen is almost incidental and the quality of the rulers is paramount. Extreme examples of such countries are Singapore and China. India too belongs to such a type of a governmental system, where ultimately only the top few matter, to steer the country down the right path. These new immigrants naturally do not relate to the original social contract that formed the basis of the United States.

Capitalism and the destruction of the family unit Continue reading On immigration, innovation and the American conundrum

US Economics and Theory of Collapse

June 8, 2025June 8, 2025sbarrkumAmerica, Blog, Civilisation, Economics, PoliticsAmerica, austerity, budget deficit, civilizational collapse, collapse theory, complexity theory, credit default swaps, debt crisis, diminishing returns, economic self-sufficiency, empire overstretch, energy independence, higher education crisis, infrastructure decay, Joseph Tainter, Korotayev, manufacturing revival, marginal returns, Moody’s downgrade, Planck principle, R&D decline, systemic risk, US decline, US defense budget, US economy, US trade deficit1 Comment

A Theory of Collapse (After a US Economic Synopsis)

Note: Italicized comments are from another Brown Pundits contributor

Unless the US falls hopelessly behind in tech, they are “built” to retain a perpetual competitive edge.

I don’t think you’ve looked closely enough at the economic fundamentals. Off the top of my head:

National Debt: $30+ trillion
Interest on Debt: $1 trillion
Budget Deficit (2024): $1.8 trillion
Trade Deficit: $140.5 billion (heavy reliance on imports)
Defense Budget: $1 trillion

Moody’s recently downgraded US debt from Aaa to Aa1, citing worsening risk indicators. This downgrade was hard to avoid—US sovereign CDS spreads are now wider than those of China and Greece, suggesting higher default risk. Continue reading US Economics and Theory of Collapse

The Elder Race and the English-Speaking Heat

June 4, 2025June 4, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Civilisation, Culture, Geopolitics, Politics, Race, Religion, X.T.MAmerican States, Anglo-Americana, Brexit, Brown Pundits, Catalonia, Class, Cultural Assimilation, Cultural Decay, Culture & Identity, Demographic Decline, Diaspora Politics, Diaspora Reflections, Elder Race, Empire & Memory, English-Speaking World, EU, Europe vs America, Global South vs Global North, Harvard, identity politics, Immigration, India, Letters from the Field, New England, Pakistan, Politics & Society, Rob Henderson, Scotland, WASP26 Comments

As I write this from Dublin, waiting to board my connecting flight—I’d nearly missed it in Newark, too absorbed in writing to hear the gate call—I’m struck by how a Euro sign or EU flag can alter one’s sense of place. Technically, I’m still in the British Isles. But culturally—unmistakably—I’m on the Continent. A sensation I never quite feel in England.

It’s a strange feeling, this flicker of European belonging. In the early millennium, I was a passionate Brexiteer—young, angry, seeking change. By the time of the referendum, a decade later, I found myself morally conflicted. I knew the EU was not a good fit but as a Bahá’í, I knew I could never advocate for disunity, of any sort. I abstained. Ironically, Commonwealth citizens could vote, but EU nationals couldn’t—a bit of imperial gatekeeping that deeply irritated my liberal British-Irish friend. (“Why can Indians vote, but not the French?” he asked.)

Today, standing in Europe, I feel the contrast sharply. The Continent is genteel, even decadent, locked into postwar consensus. Meanwhile, the English-speaking world feels like it’s on fire—politically, culturally, psychologically. It’s not just the UK or the US. India, too, belongs to this hot zone of rhetoric and reinvention. Pakistan, by contrast, while elite-driven in English, remains emotionally and socially an Urdu republic. Continue reading The Elder Race and the English-Speaking Heat

Is It Indian Culture or Hindu (Brahmin) Culture that creates excellence?

June 1, 2025June 1, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Blog, Civilisation, Culture, India, Pakistan, Race, Religion, X.T.MBangladesh, Brown Pundits, civilizational ethos, cultural inheritance, diaspora dynamics, Faizan Zaki, Hindu culture, Indian Americans, Indian Muslims, minority excellence, Pakistan, Spelling Bee71 Comments

On Faizan Zaki, Spelling Bees, and Civilizational Osmosis

Another year, another Spelling Bee crown for an Indian American. But this one, the 100th Scripps tournament, is different.

Faizan Zaki—young, brilliant, and by name Muslim—just became the latest in a long line of Indian-origin champions of America’s most idiosyncratic intellectual ritual. Faizan is the 32nd Indian American to win—meaning they’ve claimed 32 out of the last 40 Spelling Bees. But he is very likely the first Muslim American to do so.

Which raises an old but essential question: Continue reading Is It Indian Culture or Hindu (Brahmin) Culture that creates excellence?

“A Foreign Class of Servants” — JD Vance and the Great American Amnesia

June 1, 2025June 1, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Civilisation, Culture, Geopolitics, Politics, Race, Science, X.T.MAmerica First, American decline, brain drain, Brown Pundits, Geopolitics, global talent war, identity politics, immigrant labor, immigration policy, JD Vance, nationalism vs merit, postwar America, skilled migration, soft power, STEM talent, US-China rivalry, Usha Vance10 Comments

Vice President JD Vance recently declared that America doesn’t need to “import a foreign class of servants” to remain competitive. “We did it in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said. “We put a man on the moon with American talent. Some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War two, but mostly by American citizens.”

The line is memorable—not for its nationalism, but for its breathtaking amnesia.

The moon landing was not the product of some closed, white-bread meritocracy. It was powered by German engineers, Jewish refugees, and immigrant scientists—many quite literally “imported.” Wernher von Braun, the face of NASA’s rocket program, was a former Nazi, repurposed by America for its Cold War dreams.

Today, the immigrant pipeline Vance sneers at includes his own in-laws—his wife’s parents, Indian-born academics. I’ve highlighted this problematic tendency before. They weren’t servants. They were scholars. Like hundreds of thousands who have powered this country’s universities, tech firms, hospitals, and labs. America doesn’t run on pedigree. It runs on brains. And yes, those brains often have accents.

America First doesn’t mean America stays first Continue reading “A Foreign Class of Servants” — JD Vance and the Great American Amnesia

Café Concord: A View from the Counter

May 31, 2025June 1, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Culture, Race, X.T.MAmerica, Brown Pundits, café culture, Capitalism, Class, Concord, identity politics, Immigration, invisible bias, labour hierarchy, model minority, Race, social commentary, structural inequality6 Comments

I’m writing this from a bakery-café in Concord, Massachusetts—the cradle of the American Revolution, where ideals like liberty and equality were born anew in the New World. The croissants are fresh, the espresso is bespoke (lavender), and the staff layout is eerily familiar.

At the front: white staff—stylish, aesthetic, articulate—handling (bossing sometimes but in general everyone is exceptionally lovely & calm) model minority clientele with curated ease. In the kitchen: Mexican workers—efficient, invisible, foundational. It’s the same setup across most of America’s cool, clean consumer spaces: the aesthetic and the labor silently segregated by race and language.

No one talks about it. You’re not supposed to notice the subtle “Americanisation” at play (the American dream and its attendant complexities). But once you do, as a twice-immigrant (East to Britain, old England to New England), it’s hard to unsee. The roles aren’t assigned by policy, but by a deeper algorithm—one that sorts people into place based on centuries of sedimented power: race, class, culture, even aesthetics. Continue reading Café Concord: A View from the Counter

The Denizens & Dilemmas of Indo-Amerikhana

November 2, 2023The EmissaryAmerica4 Comments

Migrations have defined the story of humanity. From the great exodus out of Africa to taming the Patagonian wilds, layer upon layer of settlement would create continuums of people across the world. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, would describe this layering of society as a palimpsest, a parchment on which the original writing had been reused or refaced with new writing yet fragments of the old remain. No two societies fulfill this idea of a palimpsest better than India and America, albeit in different ways. Rhodes and Romans and the Renaissance and Rousseau would form a chain of thought bursting into a revolution as America recognized the Atlantic and ripped itself from Great Britain. Integral to this upstart nation was immigration. Echoing their fantastical Roman roots, Americans would be raised by wolves in this new wildland and welcomed any man dogged enough to join their ranks.

**BHICAJI BALSARA, THE FIRST INDIAN TO GAIN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP**

A dream was promised and sung across the world of this virgin country of opportunity and tenacity. This torch-bearing democracy would soon attract denizens of a land that hosted one the earliest forms of democracy in the world. Small numbers of Indians would settle on the golden coast of California in the 19th century. The iconic American revolutionary zeal and thirst for democracy would inspire some Indians to found the Ghadar Party in San Francisco in order to fulfill the destiny of a free India. Bhicaji Bhalsara, a Parsi from Bombay, was the first Indian to gain naturalized US citizenship in 1909 after a lengthy court battle. A small trickle of immigration would continue until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act did away with national quotas paving the way for larger amounts of Indians to migrate.

Continue reading The Denizens & Dilemmas of Indo-Amerikhana

Indian CEOs in America are a knock on of India’s specific economic strengths

December 1, 2021December 1, 2021VikramAmerica, Economics, India39 Comments

What are the broader takeaways from the apparent success of India trained CEOs in the US ? The usual Darwinian (best and brightest) or ‘sheer population’ arguments are attractive but dont withstand scrutiny. A broader explanation is that India has been disproportionately successful in producing corporate leaders (much like certain populations in the past were successful at producing generals or merchants), and due to trade and immigration links, some of its success has overflowed to the US as well.

Since 1984, India’s stock exchange has provided returns of an astounding 10,000%. Even the Dow Jones (3700%) has returned a fraction of the BSE’s returns.

This is a nearly forty year period, enough to average over most bear arguments. It spans the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kuwait War, 9/11 attacks, the Great Recession, the arrival of the internet, AI and smartphones. Given India’s strictly mediocre economic fundamentals in the 1980s, the success of listed Indian companies over an extended duration points to successful resource and work management.

Corporate India has played a much bigger role in India’s economic expansion than corporate China in China’s meteoric rise. The US tech sector has reaped an unanticipated reward of this fact. Globally though, the much more important economic implication is that India’s GDP rise is likely to be felt via private corporations, in contrast to China’s SOE heavy BRI.