It's an interesting counter-argument though (using some authoritarian regimes to claim that a democratic-ness isn't necessary for scientific achievement).

Some thoughts (more of prompts than conclusions backed with evidence): https://twitter.com/elmihiro/status/1358491196490801154

In the short term, an authoritarian regime may exhibit a mirage of comparable scientific "achievement" simply owing to its ruthless efficiency in implementing a portfolio of borrowed ideas, some of which are good.

But can that endure?

I would cynically claim that endurability is the only property of a good regime over bad.

The reason to opt for liberal values/human rights is not some inherent goodness, but just because it minimizes the likelihood that a discontent mob will collapse your ivory towers.

If an authoritarian regime can out-endure a liberal one, maybe there's an argument to be made that liberal values and human rights are not necessary.

But does that actually hold?

In the short term, a portfolio of ideas borrowed from other successful societies, implemented ruthlessly and efficiently, may provide an authoritarian regime the mirage of "competence".

But eventually they'd run out of that portfolio. What happens then?

I would argue that an open, liberal society is better at discovering a new "portfolio of ideas". Simply because they're not single-mindedly chasing a set of objectives set by a Central Council.

Knowledge is pursued for its own sake. Not because "America has it and we need it too." Scouts discovering the knowledge graph in all directions - philosophy, biology, physics, even if that doesn't directly build a better plane or a bomb.

So you let an Einstein Einstein even if you don't have an application for relativity. And then 100 years later, you're magically the only one who can build accurate atomic clocks for GPS.

Or mRNA.

And that way you endure. Because you are not racing to achieve parity with an enemy. You're charting a more fruitful course for your own "civilization".

So Ms. Thunberg may be on to something, even if by accident.