The United States is on edge in ways the nation has rarely experienced throughout its young history. The country’s global leadership is being challenged in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive world. Meanwhile, the nation’s sustained complacency in dealing with long-festering domestic needs has weakened our institutions from within and placed in grave danger our leadership in the critical fields of science and technology—on which so much of our economy and security is based. America is at a tipping point, in short, and Americans are justifiably unsettled.