The US has been very strong in the computer revolution. But foundational research that led to computers including the first variations were made in Europe.

However, I think the computer revolution happened in a time span where the US reigned supreme in the world. It was in the postwar years when Europe was rebuilding. Many European scientsits had fled to the US, and the US had more than 50% of world manufacturing output.

There are first mover advantages. The electronics industry that popped up in Silicon Valley created foundations for a later software industry. Without an enormous military like the US, there was never a European possibility for quite the same massive investment into creating an industrial cluster like Silicon Valley.

My point is not to belittle or diminish American achievement. It is simply to point out that I don't think there are anything fundamentally flowed with how European societies are run. The primary flaw or problem with Europe is our historical propensity to go to war with each other and bring massive destruction on each other.

Although in other ways one may say that if Europeans had not gone so much to war with each other they would not have developed into global powers capable of dominating so much of the rest of the world. The US itself would not have existed if Europeans had no been such warmongers.

There is a lot of funding for basic research around in Europe, but it is probably far more fragmented than in the US. Europe due to the variety of cultures and languages are not as integrated. A European may consider moving to the US than another European country.

I had the same concerns myself when studying abroad. I went to the US first because English is my strongest language after Norwegian. American culture and society is better known to us Europeans than often our own due to Hollywood and the dominance of American media. The US didn't work of for me, and I went to the Netherlands to study later. That was awesome and I wished I had gone there earlier. Yet it required much more research than going ot the US. I had almost no knowledge of Dutch society before I went there.

But that does not mean I think Europe must emulate the US, rather I think Europeans must get better at learning about each other. Create more and better media and entertainment in local languages and local cultures to expose European citizens more to the culture of all the wonderful varieties of cultures and languages that exist in Europe.