Consider drones/AI-tech similar to nuclear weapons in terms of its deterrace as well as assault capabitities.

- What if adversaries develop full AI-tech with weapons mounted on them? How can a nation defend against such a threat?

- What if democracies around the world get wiped out by such a tech which has no public opposition in communist/ authoritarian states? They will and are developing such technology.

- We just saw the use of (non-AI) drone military tech in the Armenia-Azerbaijan war. Being defenseless is not an option.

Exactly, the autocratic CCP is heavily investing in military drone capabilities, we really have no choice but to remain one step ahead. If we lived in a world without such regimes then that wouldn't be an unfortunate pragmatic necessity.

What a completely ethnocentric and asinine perspective. I am not defending China here - obviously they are up to a lot of problematic atuff.

If it wasn't the CCP, it would be Russia again, or if not Russia, then another emerging power. In 10 or 20 years it could be India, or the fragmented parts of European Union that combine to form authoritarian regimes if the swings toward autocracy continue.

Every military force is investing in drone technology because any military force in the world is investing in drone technology, and while the US was the leader for a long time, the push to outsource manufacturing and globalization led to a broad distribution of the skills, tools, and manufacturing base to build modern drones.

China is no more the root cause of the arms race than Thog was when he hit Ugh with a stick some time in ancient history. Its humans and tribalism all the way down.

That's a rather unnecessarily aggressive comment. What I said is not ethnocentric (you're presuming I'm American or white?) or asinine.

You're not considering the historical consequences of your perspective. And I made no such claim that China is the root cause of the arms race, that's a strawman.

Historical counterfactual: What would've happened in WW2 in Asia if the US had no aircraft carriers because some pacifists convinced the administration that investing in arms was just tit for tat tribalism and contributing to an arms race?

If you can't explain why the US should not invest in drones today but they should've invested in aircraft carriers in the 1930s and 1940s, then you're holding a sack filled with little more than misplaced confidence.

China is suppressing its population to great extend. More than other countries save North Korea. All school books are filled with propaganda and children need to recite xi's virtues every day. It's a brainwash machine and totalitarian. So far they are not a worldwide military power and the US cannot be conquered but this technology could change that. Deploy them in millions. Never think your opponent has the same moral values as you.

Precisely. His line of thinking would've played out to a disastrous end in the 1930s-1940s era, "oh if it wasn't for the Japanese or Germans it'd be X". Some people and some regimes are psychopathic in nature, that's the unfortunate reality, and such regimes, especially those with expansionist desires (ever heard the CCP's rhetoric about Taiwan?) have every incentive to invest in military capabilities irrespective of whether others are doing so too.

Yes! Let's vote to make more killing machines instead of funding schools and hospitals!