On the eve of a new era of military competition, tensions between the United States and China are escalating far beyond traditional weapons and into the shadowy realms of drone warfare, advanced research, and covert intelligence operations. A series of recent reports and investigations have painted a stark picture: the U.S. is struggling to keep pace with China’s relentless technological advances and aggressive tactics, raising urgent questions about the future of national security in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
According to a report released on September 10, 2025, by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the prospect of a war with China could see U.S. forces overwhelmed by swarms of Chinese drones—unless the Pentagon acts quickly to scale up and accelerate its counter-drone technologies. The authors, Stacie Pettyjohn and Molly Campbell, warn that while U.S. defense officials have long recognized the threat posed by uncrewed systems, efforts to develop effective defenses have been hampered by “insufficient scale and urgency.”
The numbers are staggering. In 2024, Beijing reportedly ordered one million one-way attack drones for delivery by 2026, demonstrating both its intent and its industrial capacity to mass-produce these weapons. As the CNAS report notes, “Without deep magazines of substantially enhanced counter-drone capabilities, the United States risks having its distributed warfighting strategies overwhelmed by massed Chinese drone attacks, and the United States could lose a war over Taiwan.”
Despite the Pentagon’s planned $7.4 billion investment in counter-drone technologies for 2025, much of that money is still being spent on advanced kinetic weapons—precision-guided missiles that often cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per shot. Meanwhile, the drones they’re meant to destroy are cheap and expendable. The imbalance was starkly illustrated during the U.S. Navy’s recent battles in the Red Sea, where high-cost missiles were deployed to take out low-cost drones, a scenario the CNAS report calls unsustainable.
Directed-energy weapons, such as lasers and microwaves, have shown promise but remain largely stuck in the prototype phase, with only limited operational deployment. General James Rainey, head of Army Futures Command, voiced frustration earlier this year, criticizing the slow adoption of integrated solutions and urging industry partners to deliver “a sum of those capabilities” rather than just “pieces of the puzzle.”
Even as the U.S. scrambles to catch up, China’s military is forging ahead. Mass production is at the heart of Beijing’s strategy, allowing it to dominate the drone market and leverage the civil-military fusion that blurs the line between commercial and defense sectors. Chinese forces have been drawing lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, experimenting with first-person view drones, fiber-optic systems, long-range strike platforms, and sophisticated reconnaissance aircraft. These technologies have featured prominently in recent Chinese military exercises, and analysts believe China may soon possess “the largest and most sophisticated drone fleet in the world.”
In a recent wargame tabletop exercise conducted by the CNAS defense team, Chinese forces were able to sustain relentless drone attacks against U.S. positions, particularly within the strategically vital “first island chain” stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. The exercise underscored the need for the U.S. to build deeper stockpiles of layered, integrated counter-drone systems, as no single weapon can address the full spectrum of drone threats. The report recommends investing in proven technologies and constructing a complex web of active and passive defenses.
U.S. commanders are not blind to the challenge. Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, stated in 2024 that he wanted to turn the Taiwan Strait “into an unmanned hellscape” with swarms of cheap, reliable drones to counter China’s advances and buy time in the event of conflict. Yet, as the CNAS report makes clear, the U.S. has a long way to go before such ambitions become reality.
Meanwhile, the battle for technological supremacy is playing out beneath the waves as well. Intelligence Online reported on September 11, 2025, that a secretive unit within the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, known as SWORD fishing, has been quietly scanning the ocean depths to detect Chinese underwater drones. These drones are designed to collect acoustic signatures from U.S. submarines, and their numbers have reportedly increased in Pacific waters in recent months. The Chinese military has also secretly acquired its first quantum computers from the company TuringQ, further enhancing its technological edge.
The threat extends far beyond hardware. A bombshell report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, released on September 10, 2025, revealed that between June 2023 and June 2025, around 300 Pentagon grants funded Chinese entities, many directly linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). More than $2.5 billion in U.S. defense-funded research went to Chinese military-related organizations, supporting advances in hypersonics, quantum sensing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, cyber warfare, intelligence and surveillance systems, and next-generation propulsion—all with clear military applications.
“These collaborations involved research in sensitive technical domains,” the committee’s report stated, “many with clear military applications.” The investigation found that Pentagon-funded research supported breakthroughs in Chinese military technologies, including high-yield explosives and hypersonic missile development. China, the report notes, now leads the world in hypersonic missile deployment and has rapidly expanded its nuclear arsenal from around 250 to 600 warheads within just a few years.
The report is scathing in its critique of Pentagon security measures, describing them as “woefully inadequate” and calling for urgent reform. “This lapse reflects [the Defense Department research and engineering office’s] failure to adopt a proactive approach to prohibiting such collaborations,” the committee wrote, warning that “the time for passive risk tolerance is over.” In response, Select Committee Chairman John Moolenaar introduced legislation to ban federal technology research collaborations with adversary-controlled entities that pose national security risks. “The United States should never subsidize the modernization of China’s military,” Moolenaar declared.
The issue of security breaches is not limited to research grants. The Justice Department’s inspector general recently disclosed that a senior FBI counterintelligence official in New York, Charles McGonigal, had leaked details of a major investigation to Chinese energy executives between 2016 and 2018. McGonigal’s actions, described in the report as “extraordinary and dishonored the FBI’s core values,” compromised a key criminal case and further highlighted the vulnerabilities within America’s security apparatus.
Amid these revelations, China and Russia have begun conducting joint submarine patrols in the western Pacific, a move hailed by Chinese state media as a demonstration of the two nations’ underwater warfare capabilities and interoperability. The first joint patrol, which took place in early August 2025, involved Chinese and Russian Kilo-class submarines operating together from the Sea of Japan to the East China Sea—an unmistakable signal of deepening military cooperation between two of America’s foremost strategic competitors.
The stakes could hardly be higher. With China’s rapid advances in drone warfare, quantum computing, and military research—and with the U.S. racing to close critical gaps in its own defenses—the global balance of power is shifting in unpredictable ways. As lawmakers, military leaders, and intelligence officials grapple with these challenges, the world watches to see whether the U.S. can adapt quickly enough to meet the moment.
In this high-stakes contest for technological and military supremacy, the margin for error is growing dangerously thin.
