Is this a competition on programming or on computer science? To wit:

In one problem, contestants were asked to calculate the minimum number of cellular base stations needed for a mobile phone to be moved from one city to another with no loss of reception. Competitors were given a map with cities, roads and base stations.

Question: were they also given the algorithms to detemrinecoverage, or did they have to already know how to develop n,k,i trees for routing, etc.

To wit again:

Another problem challenged contestants to determine how much sunlight a Shanghai apartment management company could promise tenants on April 6, 2005. The students were provided information when the sun rises and sets on that date, as well as a drawing of the buildings and apartments.

Again, were all relevant algorithms presented, or were the contestants required to know how to calculate the footcandle loading on a surface based on the angle of the sun at a given time....

If the second answer to each question was the correct answer, then this is hardly a programming or IT competition, but more accurately an engineering or computer science competition. In either case the results are...uh, disappointing...but not necessarily the death knell for US software engineering per se.

(Although I still believe that those of us like Todd should never be unemployed in the US again!)