The U.S. can't beat China with weapons alone. It needs to outproduce China by two to three times across a massive industrial base. Modern warfare moves too fast for advanced weapons to matter without the manufacturing power to replace them constantly.
Chapters
I think the real argument is the United States should radically change if it wants to be able to fight and win a war against China. It cannot outarm China. It cannot assemble a constellation of allies to beat China. It actually needs to radically outproduce China. Like, what would that mean? That would mean the United States, in the United States, manufacturing about 3 or 2 times the amount of stuff that China manufactures. And if you imagine that world, that's like such a different world. That's such a different economy. There are of course reasons for wanting such an economy anyway, right? Abundance, et cetera. Because of the rapid evolution of technology and paradigms of warfare that you see during an industrial war, we can't just buy the fanciest toys the Pentagon wants. We can't just imagine the future war. You, you have to test it. War is computation with tanks. If you already know how the war is going to play out, usually you don't have to fight it. And there's a very serious way in which the paradigm shifts that happen in war are completely unpredictable. So the US should be strategically focusing on a much, much bigger industrial base. The industrial base cannot just be defense-oriented because it would be impossible to pay for that. And, you know, it should try to crush China through ruthless economic competition by just outgrowing China.
