My mother is also British, and I also have a British passport. So I believe we have matching credentials on this matter.

Are you saying that China is going to conquer the world? Are they going to build some kind of empire?

I'm just going to point out, as you are probably aware, that after the decline the British Empire, England did not cease to exist. It wasn't swallowed up into the US. Moreover, while the US does have tremendous influence throughout the world, the British haven't lost all of theirs (even if it's diminshed).

England is leading a quite pleasant existence as a little island off the coast of Europe. And island that I've considered moving to on multiple occasions. I doubt either of us would have bothered to get our UK passport if there wasn't some value in having it.

I supposed my point is that you're predicting some sort of doom. But what that doom is, is unclear. Considering your mention of ICBM and large armies, I imagine you expect some kind of violent demise for the US.

Now the slightly off-topic part:

Ironically, my parents would both probably agree with this doom concept. Except they're willing to say that the doom is China and India taking away the jobs of all the engineers and other tech related fields in the US. While I believe that many jobs will move overseas, I'm fairly sceptical of the situation becoming as dire as some predict. All you have to do is look at the previously doomed empire of the UK or anywhere else in Europe to see millions of engineers (and IT) working quite happily.

The fact is that in both the US and Europe there is a shortage of engineers, and demographics don't point to this getting better anytime soon. This is good news for people who are already engineers. This is also means that the US and Europe are going to have to outsource some engineering, and much of the research that goes with it. Is this a bad strategy long-term? Not sure. Do we have a choice? Not really. However, I can tell you that outsourcing engineering projects to places like India and China has been happening for decades now in the developing world, but even here in the US.

For example, in the US, the designs of many chemical plants often use the same components. Ultimately, there may be one new step in manufacture of a new material, but the other 10 are old news. Often time the old news is outsourced, and the new (proprietary) part is done in-house. This can be seen as an efficient way of doing things. However, many times the outsourced work is done incorrectly. Sometimes this is because of poor design. Other times this is because of poor assembly instructions. Either way the blame generally falls back on the fact that the work was outsourced.

So you end up realizing that while you saved money outsourcing your work, in the end it didn't work because it was outsourced. You might have outsourced to an amazing team of engineers, but because they weren't there to oversee assembly to communicate with the engineers who were, everything went wrong. Which really leads me to my final point. There is no substitute for having experienced and knowledgeable engineers/techies/staff at the scene of a complex problem.

Newegg has the 280 in stock now for the staggering price of 650-700 depending on the model... the 9800/9800+ will represent an amazing value in light of this.