Interestingly, the Americans did get size shamed by the LHC into tossing billions of dollars into a giant hole in Texas (where, notably, no supercollider exists today). The Superconducting Super Collider.
This accomplished fuck-all except defunding almost all domestic American science to divert funds into digging said hole and killing the smaller colliders the US already had running. These colliders had viable plans to use themselves as accelerators to a larger loop for much cheaper costs.
This was arguably the incident that caused the collapse of US science which has not recovered to this day, in addition to pursuing a field of science that has possibly the lowest real world yield per dollar spent than any other branch, and not even building the collider as the cherry on top.
Particle physicists thought themselves to be rockstars, and the one time academia could size shame Republicans into funding something, they fucking blew it.
And because Americans are just comically fucking incompetent self sabotage addicts:
The LHC at CERN was the proposed project that the EU wanted to collaborate with US funding on, with the LHC having additional unfinished loops built into the design to allow for future upgrades, with additional potential to incorporate the entire LHC as an accelerator to a much larger collider in the future as shown in this picture. This was the plan the US rejected in favor of building their Supercollider in Texas (which again, does not exist).
America is truly a stain on humanity.
