The Role of US Groups in LHC Physics

U.S. groups have been involved in the LHC for the last fifteen years and have participated in the design, construction, installation and commissioning of the ATLAS and CMS detectors and the LHC accelerator. During this period U.S. groups have been integral to the overall effort and indeed comprise the largest national group within the detector collaborations. In the future these groups will take on operations tasks and R{\&}D plans for detector upgrades. Thus, the U.S. effort will be an extended commitment, decades long. Nevertheless, the methods whereby U.S. groups will play a proportionate role in the physics analyses are less clear. LHC data and computing resources will be spread worldwide. What collaborative tools will allow U.S. groups to fully participate in the expected rich LHC physics? Should there be multiple analysis centers within the large and distributed ATLAS and CMS collaborations? As high energy physics looks ahead to having fewer energy frontier facilities similar issues will arise in the future which makes these questions of more general interest.