Technology

Western countries have been slow to absorb these lessons. Simple and cheap weapons will not replace big, high-end platforms, but they will complement them. The Pentagon is belatedly embarking on Replicator, an initiative to build thousands of low-cost drones and munitions able to take on China’s enormous forces. Europe is even further behind. Its ministers and generals increasingly believe that they could face another major European war by the end of the decade. If so, investment in low-end drones needs to grow urgently. Moreover, ubiquitous drones will require ubiquitous defences—not just on battlefields but also in cities at peace.

I think that any war determined by who can churn out more low-end drones is going to be dominated by China, given their overwhelming share of the consumer market. Consumer drones are made there because China has comparative advantage.

That will only change if the basic methods of manufacture change, like, production is far more heavily automated. And even then, it's not clear to me that China has a disadvantage in industrial automation.

I think a more-interesting technology question is who has better counters to low-end drones. There, I can imagine room for a technological advantage. As things stand today, though, we really don't have a compelling answer, and we probably should have come up with one by now.