“America–its fate, future and vitality–is the most important foreign policy issue in the world [today],” said Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, to a packed Cemex Auditorium Thursday afternoon. “If America becomes weak, your children will grow up in a fundamentally different world.”

Friedman’s talk was part of the Graduate School of Business’s (GSB) “ViewfromtheTop” lecture series, a student-run program that brings prominent figures to campus to share their insights on effective leadership.

Introducing Friedman as “one the most influential journalists of the last few decades,” GarthSaloner, dean of the GSB, emphasized Friedman’s reporting experience on the front line of issues ranging from the Arab Spring to the ongoing legislative gridlock in Washington, D.C.

“The themes that he addresses in his reporting are those that any global citizen should be interested in,” Saloner said.

Friedman opened the talk with a review of his recently published book, “That Used To Be Us,” which seeks to explore the reasons for America’s relative decline in the 21st century and offer solutions to a situation Friedman argues still hangs in the balance.

“We just don’t know whether [a happy ending] is fiction or nonfiction,” Friedman said.

Citing his experiences travelling to China and witnessing the investment in infrastructure and growth undertaken there, he argued that Americans cannot afford to be complacent or acquiesce to any sense of inevitability of a deceptively gradual shift in power.

“That sense of resignation, that America’s best days are behind it and that China’s are ahead, is the topic of conversation across the country,” Friedman said. “No American should resign themselves to that. We are optimists, but we are frustrated optimists.”

Friedman argued that the United States’ tendency toward complacency and an inability to build for the long run has led to missed opportunities–whether addressing globalization emerging from the end of the Cold War or the post-9/11 decade lost in Iraq and Afghanistan–rather than to rejuvenation.

Noting ongoing technological advances such as video-conferencing and increased automation, Friedman argued that the dominance of the relatively self-contained American economy has ended.

“In terms of impact, it is as big as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press,” Friedman argued. “When the world gets this hyper-connected, it’s like the whole global curve rose. Every employer suddenly has more access to cheap automation, cheap labor…cheap genius. Average is over.”

Friedman asserted that the technological revolution will require people to market their individual differences to employers even more than in the past.

“Everyone is going to have to develop their ‘extra,’ that unique value that defines why they should be employed or promoted,” Friedman said. “We all [now] want to do work that can’t be described by an algorithm and so can’t be outsourced or automated.”

Citing interviews with corporate leaders in the course of writing “That Used To Be Us,” Friedman described a common emphasis among employers on hiring and promoting creative and innovative employees better equipped to respond to a rapidly changing market. He argued, however, that the development of such individuals should be linked to greater government spending.

“For us as a country, we have two education challenges,” Friedman said. “We need to bring our bottom to our average, and we need to bring our average to a global high…We need more and better education.”

Succeeding in such a competitive global economy, according to Friedman, requires the development of individual skills, an emphasis on self-improvement and a relentless work ethic.

“The minute you think you’re finished, that’s when you are,” Friedman asserted. “Stay hungry, take pride, be innovative and think entrepreneurially.”

Audience questioning focused in part on the reasons for the United States’ recent decline so soon after the end of the “American Century.”

“I grew up in a place and time where politics worked,” Friedman said. “We had a formula for success in this country, and we’ve gotten away from it.”

He argued that renewed investment in education, more government-funded research, a balanced budget and increased expenditure on infrastructure would collectively offer the ability to re-energize the United States.

“Tell me we’re going to preserve the American Dream for another generation,” Friedman said. “We want America to be to the world what Cape Canaveral was to America. We want America to be the place where everyone in the world comes to launch their moonshot.”

Responding to another question on parallels between the Arab Spring and recent social unrest–emanating from similar issues, such as socioeconomic inequality and lack of economic opportunity–in the West, Friedman, who covered the Arab Spring extensively, was quick to differentiate between the two.

“The Arab Spring is the greatest story I’ve covered,” Friedman said. “It was about the deepest human things–dignity, justice and the quest to get the tools and opportunities to realize one’s full potential. We aren’t stifled in that way.”

Friedman concluded the talk by returning to the theme of a globalized economy and how the United States can excel within the new reality.

“In a flat world, there’s no ‘here’ and no ‘there,’” Friedman said. “There’s just good, better and best.”