China seen steadily cutting into U.S. military technological edge

The United States is at risk of losing its “decisive edge” in military technology to China, challenging the battlefield superiority America has enjoyed since World War II, a new report by a top Washington think tank is warning.

The Center for a New American Security analysis said that, should a conflict break out between the U.S. and China in the coming decades, Washington could be fighting “from a position of technological inferiority” due to the massive investments Beijing is making in next-generation military applications.

“Chinese technological capabilities are growing as rapidly as its economic power. The Soviets were never able to match, much less overcome, America’s technological superiority. The same may not be true for China,” according to the report by CNAS analysts Robert O. Work, a former deputy secretary of defense under both Presidents Obama and Trump, and Greg Grant, an adjunct senior fellow for defense at the think tank.

“Considering what the Chinese military has accomplished technologically in little more than two decades and what they plan to do in the decades to come, … [the United States] is close to becoming the victim of a deliberate, patient and robustly resourced military-technical offset strategy,” they added.

Chinese advances in cyber and electronic warfare, information warfare and the weaponization of space have concerned military strategists at the Pentagon for years, and Beijing shows no sign of slowing down in either area, according to the Defense Department’s annual assessment of Beijing’s military prowess.

“China’s space program continues to mature rapidly” and will continue to outpace spending levels by Russia and others in the coming decades, American defense officials wrote in its 2019 assessment of People’s Liberation Army or PLA.

China also already possesses medium and intermediate-range missile technology that has achieved near parity with American-made systems, defense intelligence officials said January. It would likely be those types of missiles that would likely be the first salvo in any Chinese effort to retake Taiwan.