The Strategic Self-Sanctioning of Talent and the Erosion of U.S. Technological Hegemony in the Geopolitics of Great Power Competition

This paper analyzes the United States' recent restrictive turn in high-skilled immigration policy, culminating in a prohibitive fee on H-1B visas, as a critical miscalculation in the era of great power competition. It posits that this policy constitutes a form of "strategic self-sanctioning of talent," voluntarily dismantling a key pillar of American technological hegemony and national security. Employing a theoretical framework that integrates the Geopolitics of Talent, Technological Soft Power, and Innovation Dependency, the analysis argues that the U.S. is weaponizing its own structural vulnerabilities at a time of intensifying global competition for human capital. The paper dissects the legal and economic architecture of this restrictive turn, demonstrating a shift from covert bureaucratic deterrence to overt, performative policy shocks. It finds that these policies create a profound strategic misalignment between U.S. industrial policy, exemplified by the CHIPS Act, and the immigration system required to execute it. By maximizing risk and uncertainty, the U.S. inadvertently cedes its competitive advantage to rival nations that have engineered more predictable, talent-centric immigration systems. The paper concludes that these self-inflicted wounds are accelerating a structural shift from a unipolar, U.S.-centric innovation ecosystem to a multipolar talent world, potentially marking a permanent erosion of America's long-held technological supremacy.