For the United States’ 250th anniversary, it is important to note that liberty, law and openness—not technology alone—built the institutions behind U.S. innovation and influence.
A fireworks display is seen during the "Salute to America" Independence Day celebration on the National Mall in Washington, DC, in the early morning hours of July 5, 2026. The nation is marking the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Indpendence.AFP/YONHAP
Park So-young
The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.
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The United States has marked the 250th anniversary of its founding. Fireworks over Washington celebrated one nation's history. Yet the world remembers 1776 as a turning point not simply because the United States was born. It was the year when political, economic and technological changes converged and the blueprint for the modern order emerged.
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that the legitimacy of power rested not with a monarch but with the people. That same year, Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" systematized the principle that markets and the division of labor create wealth. In Britain, the Industrial Revolution gathered force as the steam engine began to transform production. Politics redefined power, economics redefined wealth and technology redefined production. The year symbolized these currents combining into a new civilization.
Ideas and technology alone, however, cannot change the world. Change becomes durable only when embedded in institutions. The United States translated the spirit of the Declaration into a Constitution and built a system in which liberty could be protected through the separation of powers and the rule of law.
The U.S. Patent Act of 1790 illustrates that point. The United States recognized invention not as accidental inspiration but as a property right protected by law. Once ideas became property, invention led to investment and start-ups, and innovation became a driver of national growth. Innovation may arise by chance, but repeated innovation is created by institutions.
Freedom, competition, the rule of law and property rights connected creativity to growth. Universities supplied knowledge, capital markets absorbed risk and global talent flowed to the United States. The nation expanded competitiveness through an open order that linked its innovation capacity to the world. An environment in which capital, technology and talent crossed borders accelerated U.S. innovation.
The same mechanism has been repeated in the modern technological revolution. The internet began with research by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, under the U.S. Department of Defense, but spread through universities and venture ecosystems, becoming the main artery of today's global economy. The key was not technology itself but the institutional foundation that allowed technology to grow and spread.
Later economists explained this through institutions. Nobel laureate Douglass North argued that growth is determined not by resources but by institutional quality. Economist Daron Acemoglu has likewise emphasized that long-term prosperity comes not from societies where power is concentrated in a few hands but from inclusive institutions that allow more people to join competition and innovation.
The United States' history for 250 years has borne this out. From the steam engine to railroads and electricity, from computers and the internet to artificial intelligence today, the leaders of innovation have changed. But the foundations that made those changes possible have not. Liberty and the rule of law guaranteed by the Constitution, the patent system, capital markets and openness have sustained innovation. The United States led the world not because it developed a particular technology first but because it created a structure in which new technologies could emerge.
Today, the world has entered a period in which the international order is being redrawn. Competition over AI, semiconductors, supply chains and energy has expanded beyond industry into diplomacy and security. Technology, economics and security now move as one strategy. What matters as much as technology is who can offer trustworthy institutions and rules.
The United States is seeking to build a new order around supply chains and advanced technologies. But its true strength over the past two and a half centuries has come not from closure and control but from institutions that made innovation possible through openness and competition. A new order led by the United States will gain durability only when it stands on that foundation.
The legacy the United States left to humanity in 1776 was not a single document. It was a principle of governance that protected liberty through institutions and connected those institutions to innovation. The world has moved around that principle for the past 250 years. The next 250 years will be no different. Technology may run ahead of its age, but history is moved by institutions the world trusts.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
