WW2 resulted in diverting a substantial amount of resources to R&D and hence the explosion in innovation & science everything from Radar, automobiles, computing, nuclear energy, not to mention jet engine and computing.

Today China is on a one sided war of technology dominance while the rest of us are sleeping or bickering over patents & tech protectionism, anti competitiveness and blocking acquisition.

China has the scale, money, leadership and capability to pool resources on a literal war footing to develop what it can not buy. Let us not fool ourselves.