Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency States China has Surpassed US Military Tech in some areas

A favorite troupe here - and elsewhere tbh - is that the US is 30 years ahead of the rest of the world in military technology. This has been repeated over and over. It is especially repeated here on ATS on the military project forums, like here and the aircraft projects. I've railed against that for years: it's a complacency that costs almost every single group that espouses it in the end because it breeds complacency.

The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency out a report today stating that China has been closing the gap with the US and in some areas has surpassed the United States in miltech.

Go read it for yourself:

dod.defense.gov...

This situation is not the problem of a single administration. You can't point to one and say 'oh, it's HIS fault.' Every administration for the last 30 years is to blame.

Empires - and republics - fall from within.

a reply to: anzha

Why in the world would the DoD release a report confirming military inferiority?

Probably because it isn't true, and we're manipulating China, the American public (to support inflated military spending, presumably), or both.

a reply to: NthOther

Maybe they're trying to goad China into spending HUGE amounts of money on failed military and scientific programs. Worked on the Soviets.

At least they still cant drive.
Please dont ban me

They have been using money spent to judge military for many years. The thing is that is not always true, if the Defense contractors are charging a lot yet not producing as much advantage as another country is, then the other countries can get ahead because of better bang for the buck.

Russia now has missiles we may not be able to stop now. Their spending is less than ours on these things. but they advanced more. Our government can not blow away the fact that our military is falling behind because of extensive costs. It was only a matter of time.

THe problem here is ENEMIES DOMESTIC, willingly allowing what the MSM calls theft of intellectual property, when it is folks within our own elected, and Non Elected filling their pockets full of Ca$h....

China can be handled if they are reigned in via the closing of that American elected sanctioned THEFT of technology..

Is it too late? some may say yes....

Others may say No... We still have a last opportunity to protect our country and stop allowing the theft of American innovation...

The Grand Experiment is in peril...

Without this nation, and it's self sufficiency, we all fall into the grasp of the multi failed grip of those who think they know better...

Not looking forward to serfdom... just sayin...

They have been stealing our tech for years thanks to the Clinton’s and us letting them build everything for us. It isn’t that surprising that they would be catching up in some areas.

The good news is I don’t see any compelling reason for a military conflict unless some moron decides we need to have another unnecessary war with someone who isn’t our enemy.

They argue about a pitiful 5 billion for basic border security and then spend trillions on wasteful military spending.

If we wont protect our borders what difference does our military make?

Now they can pull a false flag and say China did it, we could not stop it since it was better tech.

I wonder if those "areas" are more advanced because of the tech that the Clinton Crime Syndicate sold the Chinese.

You want to talk about Collusion, being a traitor and being an agent of a foreign government Leftys?

Let's start there if we are going to start anywhere.

Boarders are racist, so who cares if some nation state is better than another, we all need to come together as one world m. Russia can but the coke

Are we saying a wall can it stop China

I've been forming a new theory (of mine at least) lately about this very type of thing called Ceilling Theory. The jist of it is that technologies have a ceiling on them, or shall we say a steep curve or a sharp angle on advancement.

We've discovered, developed, and utilized many awesome technologies as a society in the 21st century and even more in the 20th century such as nuclear power, the computer, the cellphone, internet. In the 21st century we've built upon and continued to perfect those technologies with new ones branching off of them. However, a point is reached where we are "up to par" on everything and drastically new technologies simply aren't possible. Wireless speeds for example. We're about to roll out 5G on the masses and look at the upgrades required simply to do that. Gee, 4G isn't fast enough, I want it playing the moment I think of it. I mean.. really, is there going to be a 7G, 8G, 9G etc? How fast can it possibly get is my point. The same goes for gaming consoles. How good can the graphics possibly get? What about when all of the worthwhile, cool new features have all been found, used, and upgraded already? Most consumers don't want to keep playing a 10yr old xbox so I'm sure they'll always find an excuse to drop a new one but you get my point.

The important thing to consider is the effect this has on military and what it means in the future when countries like China are completely caught up on their technology, then start surpassing us in certain ways? Well, the problem is that China has about five times as many citizens as we do and are operating under a slower but steady and solid system best used for a massively populous nation. A good analogy would be a slow, heavy 18 wheel truck except it'd be going downhill.

All the huge cost overruns, perpetual delays, cancelled money sucking projects, gigantic corporate profits, building a part or two in each state so Congress won't cancel orders and projects that require jobs and workers and voters, even the Defense Department doesn't want anymore.... we hardly get the biggest bang for our buck. Allowing China to steal most of our secrets doesn't help either. Funny, when I read about the latest spying scandal or insider that stole secrets.... the last name is usually Chinese. There are the traitors that sell out for money, get blackmailed for various reasons, have a grudge against their own country.... too many reasons, all ending us up right here.... slowly becoming second rate in a number of areas and the future is looking grim if we continue like this. Serious crackdown on Defense Industries for starters! Quit losing secrets, start keeping their promises. Bonuses for genuine advances, penalties for #ing up! They are Gaming us and China is catching up as a result!

What we REALLY need to understand is how much China is REALLY spending on their military. We can say that they can't catch up by spending $200 billion a year on their military, and that is DIRECT funding which seems fairly low for a country that has 4.33x the number of people than the US that spent $681 billion, so 3.4x as much.

Now there are many factors that make distort these numbers drastically, in favor of the Chinese.

One is over-charging and wasteful government projects that end up with expensive white elephants, semi-useless platforms and even totally scrapped multi billion (and tens/hundreds of billion dollar projects!). The no bids and outrageous charging for parts and equipment really puts a dent in that $681 billion. The Chinese seem to have these things a little more under control than the US and it is due to the centralized form of government and the control of various industries by the CCP. If a project "fails" in china, I suspect the CCP is going to extract their pound of flesh in utilizing the tech in some other application, where in the US, much of that tech is proprietary knowledge of a single company (yeah, capitalism - but it does have some excellent benefits socialism/communism certainly doesn't). Now that company may incorporate the new tech into another application, but not necessarily. It can also sell the rights (again, costing another company MORE even though it's already been paid for by the US military - so the military would end up paying 2x in the long run for the same tech).

The purchasing power parity (PPP) is almost 2:1, meaning a dollar goes 2x as far in China, and that is at a cash level.

Per capita income for china is ~$10,100 vs $62,500 which is a 6.2:1 ratio which means that a person would make A LOT less working in China doing the same job. If an engineer is making $120K in the US, they might expect to make $20-30K in China. This allows for many more engineers/workers to be hired for R&D, production, etc in that $200 billion. When coupled with the 2:1 PPP, this comes out to 8:1 to 12:1 disparity in spending, meaning that $200 billion would be equivalent to $1.6-2.4 TRILLION in spending and if you factor in the other efficiencies described in the above paragraph (basically getting more results per money spent), this number is even higher - to what degree, IDK.

Now we have to look at intellectual property theft, which puts the two countries on distinctively unequal footing. The theft of IP allows for much less spending on R&D, again allowing that "$200 billion" to go MUCH further.

Finally there is the "subsidies" that are given to various industries such as steel, aluminum, titanium, production, electronics manufacturing, chemical industry (explosives and such). IDK how their subsidies work, IIRC they don't pay a direct subsidy to these industries but give them in an indirect form which is why calculating a real tariff for exports from China is difficult. They may provide subsidies in the form of providing extremely low cost electricity (or oil/gas) or even builing power stations for manufacturing - or by doing the same for raw materials, especially those that come from within the country (such as ores mined in China). This has a huge impact on how far their $200 billion will go as well.

We also don't know how much of a hidden tax is factored into companies that serve a dual role in manufacturing Chinese military components and manufacturing products meant for their civilian marketplace and exports. This can work by making the products for the civilian market slightly more expensive to produce than those for the military. If the company makes 1million products at $100 each for the civilian market, there may be a %10 hidden tax ("overhead costs..?") which would amount to $10million. Now the company could make the same item for the military, say 100,000 units and that hidden tax would have paid for that entire production of that item - or maybe the make a better item that costs $200 each, so that would turn out to cost them half the price.

These types of factors all come into play when looking at other countries military spending, and their spending has a direct impact on how willing they are to be the "worlds workshop" b/c they get so many hidden benefits and even more if they are willing to be sneaky about it (I sure couldn't imagine them being dishonest in any way....).

So I would like to see what this $200 billion actually buys when all the above factors are brought into consideration. I suspect that with everything listed above a closer comparison would be that the US would have to spend $2-3trillion/yr to get the same output.

a reply to: Carcharadon

Selling tech can only make them catch up, not surpass.

Well this was only inevitable I guess. I was hoping AI would be developed before this happened because it wouldn't matter how many more scientists they have.

I guess it is just a numbers game and they have way more...

Well this report should certainly lead to increased budgets next year. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

"I've been forming a new theory (of mine at least) lately about this very type of thing called Ceilling Theory. The jist of it is that technologies have a ceiling on them, or shall we say a steep curve or a sharp angle on advancement."

r0xor, you're describing a section in Gartner's Hype Cycle called the Plateau of Productivity. It's the point that a technology reaches a level of maturity that is limited by the components of the technology itself. There are no tangible improvements until a new technology can be applied to the existing one.

Look:

3.bp.blogspot.com...

Cheers

originally posted by: watchandwait410
Well this was only inevitable I guess. I was hoping AI would be developed before this happened because it wouldn't matter how many more scientists they have.

I guess it is just a numbers game and they have way more...

There are plenty of scientists in the USA however their ability to discover and do R&D is practically non existant.

Sure there are plenty of wonderful ideas however without the ability to apply those ideas they may as well be wishful thinking.

Lets not forget our science and technology is held back by consumer spending, supply and demand.
Companies will not create a product they cannot sell alot of and corner the market with.
The very idea that consumers could somehow drive scientific progress has held us back for generations.
We will never get jetpacks and flying cars. Nor will there be free energy or new energy sources.
Which is why we are going old shool back to coal and oil rather than foward with eletric and alternative fuels.