Having graduated from high school in 1989 I can assure you that people have been saying this since as long as I have been a teenager. It used to be that people were obsessed with how Japan was going to suddenly dominate the American economy with their extraordinary technological prowess.
It seems like what people really want is to encourage American kids to study science and math and they are using the boogey man stories of foreign domination and excellence to somehow play into that narrative.
I think it's a mistake to think of "countries" in this way. America has never helped most of the people in it get good educations. I don't personally want to be "dominant" in this nationalistic way. So it doesn't bother me at all. If you are interested in math, study math.
It seems like what people really want is to encourage American kids to study science and math and they are using the boogey man stories of foreign domination and excellence to somehow play into that narrative.