I think one depressing example is innovation in weapons and other dangerous fields. "If we don't build it, someone else will first" is unfortunately historically been shown to be true, has it not?
Today's unsavory borderline reactionary doomposting brought to you by: my crippling fear that I'm isolating myself in a political echo-chamber (so naturally I gotta hop online and exclusively ask my fellow leftists)
I'm Russian and I was amazed to find out that popcorn is ancient and Americans actually had special machines for making even in the 1910s. We never got that shit even after khrush's initiative, and we love movies no less than americans. Popcorn became a thing there in the 90s