I think that the self-told Western media narrative (of the Chinese not being innovative and only being copy-cats) has cut at least 5 to 10 years of the advantage that the West used to have in front of China.
Had the decisions makers in the West been more aware of the real innovative minds/processes active in China maybe those decision makers would have taken more pro-active steps earlier on, instead they chose to sleep on their laurels. I think a similar thing happened to the US car industry in relation to the Japanese car industry in the '70s and early '80s, with known devastating results for the US car industry.
If one team does dramatically better than another team, I would look at training and resources. If there's a big gap in that preparation, then it's not a good comparison. If I'm going to college and I'm putting all my time into something other than a conventional pursuit of a college degree, then I'm going to question why I'm there and if I would be better off elsewhere.
This assumes an undergrad experience. I know nothing about college beyond that point. All I wanted to do was get my degree and move on.
I should have mentioned that I didn't go to college in the States. This could be true, a lot of the technical college experience in some parts of Asia involves doing practical stuff. In my part of the world, the theory is often lags practice because the curriculum rarely keeps up with state of the art in academia or industry.
> If one team does dramatically better than another team, I would look at training and resources.
They were definitely better funded than other teams. They also had unrestricted access to the biggest hardware markets in the world, and perhaps some bleeding edge automation technology from the industry.
> If I'm going to college and I'm putting all my time into something other than a conventional pursuit of a college degree, then I'm going to question why I'm there and if I would be better off elsewhere.
Yeah I guess the average US undergrad experience in Computer Science/Engineering is more focused on preparing you for a job and/or grad school. The coursework is rigorous enough that it prevents you from going for more hobbyist pursuits. America's path-breaking innovation comes from its Science funding and Graduate Programs, and that's where China and other emerging powers have a lot of catching up to do.
The chinese military is way, way behind in pretty much all regards and even going for "disruptive tech" won't do them much good when they can't even manage to design/produce a working jet engine for their fighter jets that isn't complete garbage. They basically resorted to copying 1980s russian designed engines, but couldn't get the metallurgy right so they just imported them. You can't start to compare with the US military capability if even Russia can be much better than you at producing something as basic (in terms of military needs) as a jet engine
There's also nuclear weapons as a concern. I'm not sure we're quite talking mutually assured destruction, but we wouldn't want to go there. So far, nuclear deterrence has held up.
There's a lot of ways to fight a war. Conventional military technology likely wouldn't be involved on any battleground we would find ourselves on with China.
For a hot war, China seems underequipped, but this doesn't seem the most relevant anyways.
Cyber and proxy war-like capabilities seem more important in this day and age. From what I can tell China leads in cyber capabilities versus the US. And they've been able to expand in the South China Sea without much retaliation so far, so maybe they're even doing alright on the other.
That's like saying a car is the fastest car except it's engine.
I feel like China sometimes looks more advanced, but in actuality is far behind. It's easy to look advanced when your technology ecosystem is highly centralized and on display for the purpose of bolstering national pride. In the US the ecosystem is fractured and exists solely to provide value. The tech isn't there for show, it's there for competition and profit.
SPLAT!
Boston Dynamics is far ahead of anyone in robotics, and I can't really see an argument for being more advanced in computing while being behind in semiconductors/chips since that's all that really matters.
Also in other areas of tech such as aerospace companies like SpaceX are only further increasing the technological gap.
Anecdotally, I remember competing against Chinese robotics teams as a college student. It's a myth that the Chinese are not innovative - their engineering is top notch and they routed the competition with hardware tech that had never been seen before in an academic setting. More surprisingly, they freely share their designs with other Chinese teams, cultivating a culture of open hardware.
Here's a video of a Chinese robot throwing balls through a hoop and landing them on a platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUZgMrl7qQ