In the last twenty years, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has changed from a large but outdated force into a modern and capable military. While China still lags behind the United States overall military equipment and operational expertise, it has made significant advancements in important areas, enhancing its relative capabilities. This progress reflects a concerted effort to modernize its armed forces, ensuring that the PLA is better equipped and more proficient than ever before.
The United States can no longer rely on divestment efforts to safeguard itself from China’s advancements in military technology. To stay competitive, it must also accelerate its own pace of innovation.
Recently, the United States Congress has devoted significant attention to discussing the need to curtail China’s rapidly advancing technology sector. Members of Congress are rightly concerned about China’s use of artificial intelligence, its production of connected cars, and the backdoors it builds into its tech exports. These technological advancements enhance China’s economic position and bolster its military capabilities. If we remain complacent and continue on our current path, China will inevitably surpass us in technological advancements.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been successfully modernizing its defense industry, aiming for full modernization by 2035. With an annual defense spending increase of 7%, China is ramping up the production of critical weapons, artillery, and supplies, much of which is being developed using stolen U.S. intellectual property. China’s navy has already become the largest in the world, and its other military branches continue to grow in size and capability.
While Congress is wisely considering various sanctions and divestment efforts to slow China’s technological dominance, these measures alone will not be sufficient if the United States does not accelerate its own military innovation.
The reality is that the U.S. military is not producing and innovating at the pace it once did. This issue is particularly evident in the U.S. Air Force, which has been vocal about the limitations imposed by Congress’s spending caps, hindering its ability to maintain its status as the world’s most capable and lethal air force.
The problem of constrained funding has been exacerbated since the Inflation Reduction Act of 2023, which further limited military spending. Recently, Deborah Lee James and Whitten Peters, former Secretaries of the U.S. Air Force under the Obama and Trump administrations, respectively, expressed concerns about how funding shortages are forcing the Air Force to reconsider or even dilute its plans to keep up with China’s air force advancements.
The U.S. has a crucial program called the “Next Generation Air Dominance” (NGAD) initiative, which aims to develop a new sixth-generation fighter system, including a new fighter aircraft and other manned and unmanned aerial vehicles. This system is intended to be more advanced than the one China plans to finalize by 2035. Military leaders have emphasized that failing to build this system would effectively cede U.S. air superiority to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Despite understanding the importance of the NGAD program, the Air Force is considering scaling it back due to budget constraints. Without the NGAD, the Air Force would have to rely more heavily on the F-35, a program widely criticized for its inefficiencies and high costs.
According to the Project on Government Oversight, the F-35 program began on October 26, 2001, when Lockheed Martin received the development contract. Since then, the program’s costs have ballooned to $1.7 trillion. Despite this enormous financial commitment, less than a third of the jets can effectively perform their combat roles.
The U.S. must end this ineffective approach. Protecting itself from China’s progress in military technology requires more than just divestment efforts; it demands a faster pace of innovation. Anything less would be tantamount to surrendering to our Eastern Asian competitors.
