The United States misread the lessons of the Cold War, while China accurately understood the dynamics of the post–Cold War world. Today, as the U.S. and China compete in technology, it is imperative to draw concrete lessons from this divergence. In strategic competition, reality does not bend to values; outcomes are determined by capacity, cost, and coordination. Recognizing this, the U.S. must focus on building resilient technological capabilities, managing resources efficiently, and orchestrating coherent national strategies if it hopes to maintain an edge in the global tech race.
Rethinking Technology Competition: Prioritize Analysis Over Ideology
In the current global technology race, the United States risks letting ideology override rigorous analysis. Too often, discussions are framed around questions of moral or political correctness—“Who is right?”—rather than practical capability: “Who can actually build, scale, and sustain?” This mindset creates cognitive shortcuts that oversimplify complex technological and industrial challenges. Assertions such as “authoritarian systems can’t innovate,” “markets naturally outperform planning,” or “China’s successes are fake or unsustainable” serve as comforting slogans, but they provide little analytical insight.
China’s approach to technological development illustrates the limitations of relying on ideology. The country has consistently treated technology as an engineering and organizational challenge, not a moral or political one. Successes in areas like semiconductor yield rates, power grid stability, manufacturing throughput, and talent pipeline development have been achieved through methodical planning, close coordination between laboratories, factories, and deployment teams, and iterative feedback loops. These are concrete, measurable outcomes rather than abstract ideological claims.
For the United States to maintain its competitive edge, it must shift its focus from moral judgments to precise industrial diagnostics. The critical questions should be: Where are U.S. bottlenecks? Which supply chains fail under stress? Which technologies falter when scaled rather than when invented? By systematically identifying and addressing these challenges, policymakers and industry leaders can develop strategies grounded in evidence rather than assumption.
Failing to replace ideological shortcuts with data-driven analysis is not just a conceptual error—it has tangible consequences. When ideology answers questions before empirical assessment does, the U.S. cedes strategic advantage. To compete effectively, America must prioritize rigorous evaluation, operational efficiency, and scalable solutions over conventional wisdom about governance, markets, or morality. Only then can it ensure sustainable technological leadership in the 21st century.
Legitimacy Through Delivery: Why Performance Matters as Much as Procedure
In today’s technological and economic competition, legitimacy is no longer earned solely through procedure or democratic credentials; it is increasingly judged by tangible performance. In other words, the ability to deliver results—whether in infrastructure, technology, or energy—now carries as much weight as adherence to formal rules or processes. This shift has profound implications for global competition.
The United States has long operated under the assumption that if a system is “free,” superior outcomes will naturally follow. By contrast, China operates on a different logic: legitimacy is fragile and contingent on outcomes. If policies and projects fail to produce results, legitimacy erodes. Therefore, delivery is non-negotiable. This distinction shapes how each country approaches technological development, infrastructure, and industrial strategy.
In practical terms, technological leadership cannot be won with rhetoric or lofty declarations. Semiconductor dominance is achieved by fabs that operate around the clock. AI leadership is secured through robust compute capacity, expansive data pipelines, and real-world deployment—not academic papers. Similarly, leadership in the energy transition comes from physically building and modernizing grids, not merely hosting climate summits or issuing policy statements.
For the United States, this reality demands a hard reckoning. Democratic values and procedural rigor alone do not guarantee state capacity or competitiveness. To remain globally competitive, American systems must be able to approve infrastructure projects efficiently, coordinate seamlessly across agencies, and tolerate long-term investments with delayed returns. Without these capabilities, even the strongest procedural legitimacy will not compensate for underperformance.
Ultimately, the era of “legitimacy by declaration” is ending. In the tech race and beyond, credibility is earned through execution, and performance now stands on equal footing with procedure in defining a nation’s legitimacy.
From Stopgap to Strategy: Making Industrial Policy a Lasting Capability
Industrial policy cannot be treated as a temporary fix or an emergency response; it must be recognized and built as a core national capability. For decades, the United States approached industrial coordination as an anomaly, something to be deployed reluctantly and then abandoned once the crisis passed. In contrast, China never viewed such coordination as ideologically problematic, allowing its government to develop and maintain coherent systems for execution over the long term.
Today, the U.S. faces a critical challenge: it is implementing industrial policy without the institutional foundation necessary for effective execution. Authority is fragmented across multiple agencies, legal frameworks are cumbersome, local opposition can block initiatives, and short political cycles limit strategic continuity. These structural weaknesses mean that even well-intentioned subsidies and programs risk being largely performative, generating announcements rather than measurable outcomes.
The competitive advantage of countries like China does not lie in sheer state control but in the coherence and discipline with which they implement industrial strategy. Execution consistency, long-term planning, and the ability to translate policy into tangible results define the gap between rhetorical support for innovation and actual industrial success.
For the United States to truly compete in the global technology race, industrial policy must be institutionalized rather than ad hoc, insulated from the disruptions of election cycles, and evaluated based on tangible outputs rather than political theater. Without these reforms, the country risks repeating past mistakes—treating industrial policy as a temporary tool rather than a strategic capability that can sustain long-term technological and economic leadership.
Tools, Not Strategies: Rethinking Sanctions and Chokepoints
Sanctions and chokepoints are often treated as strategic levers, but in reality, they are tools—temporary measures that can shape the battlefield but do not constitute a strategy on their own. Relying on coercion or pressure to force an opponent into alignment reflects a post–Cold War assumption that superiority and external pressure automatically produce convergence. Experience, however, demonstrates that such assumptions are flawed.
China’s response to U.S. economic pressure provides a clear case in point. Sanctions have prompted redundancy, blockades have encouraged domestic substitution, and chokepoints have dictated engineering priorities. Measures intended to constrain China instead accelerated its self-sufficiency: semiconductor restrictions stimulated domestic lithography research, export controls strengthened supply chain resilience, and economic pressure incentivized vertical integration across critical industries.
The lesson is clear: if a strategy depends on the opponent’s failure, it is not a strategy. Likewise, if a strategy encourages the opponent to become more self-reliant, it risks being self-defeating. Tools like sanctions and chokepoints can buy time and create leverage, but they cannot replace comprehensive domestic reform or a coherent long-term vision.
Effective use of economic coercion requires precision. Sanctions should be narrowly targeted, aimed at buying time for internal rebuilding, and never allowed to substitute for structural improvements at home. Policymakers must recognize that the value of such tools lies in supporting a broader strategic framework, not in attempting to force outcomes that may ultimately strengthen the very competitor they seek to weaken.
In sum, coercive measures are instruments, not ends. The true measure of strategy lies not in the pressure applied to an opponent but in the resilience, adaptability, and self-sufficiency cultivated within one’s own system. Recognizing this distinction is essential to avoiding self-defeating policies and ensuring sustainable strategic advantage.
Building Reality: Why Engineering Capacity Outweighs Narrative Power
In a technological age, the ability to build faster, cheaper, and at scale determines real-world influence. Narratives may shape perception, but they do not create tangible capabilities. Engineering capacity, not storytelling, ultimately sets the terms of competition.
The United States continues to lead in frontier research, elite universities, and conceptual breakthroughs. Its strengths lie in inventing new technologies and pioneering ideas at the edge of knowledge. Yet these advantages do not automatically translate into global dominance without the means to scale and deploy innovations effectively.
China, by contrast, excels at turning research into reality. Its strength lies in scaling, integrating, deploying, and compressing costs. In the contemporary tech race, success is measured less by who invents first and more by who can take discoveries from lab to fabrication, from market to global standard. Execution, not rhetoric, now defines strategic advantage.
For the U.S. to maintain its edge, it must rebuild the missing middle: engineers, not just researchers; factories, not just startups; and robust infrastructure, not just intellectual property. Without these systemic foundations, breakthroughs remain isolated, unable to influence global markets or establish enduring standards.
Ultimately, narratives alone do not compound. Systems do. The nations that master the full chain—from invention to deployment—dictate reality. Engineering capacity, not persuasive messaging, determines which technologies shape the future.
Letting Go of the Illusion of China’s Inevitable Collapse
The expectation that China will eventually collapse has become less an analytical judgment than a psychological comfort. It functions as a defense mechanism—an assurance that time itself will resolve strategic anxiety. But history shows that waiting for an adversary to fail is not a strategy; it is a substitute for one.
This mindset closely resembles a recurring Cold War delusion: the belief that moral or ideological correctness guarantees eventual victory. The assumption runs as follows—we are right, therefore reality will ultimately align with us. Such thinking mistakes conviction for causality and optimism for planning.
Empirically, the record does not support the thesis of imminent Chinese failure. China has endured a prolonged trade war, adjusted to technological containment, sustained growth under sustained pressure, and continued to move up the industrial value chain. These outcomes do not describe a brittle or transient system, but one that is resilient, adaptive, and capable of learning under constraint.
The more difficult conclusion, therefore, is also the more necessary one: China is not a temporary anomaly in the international system. It is a durable, high-capacity state with significant institutional, economic, and technological depth. Treating it as a passing problem distorts policy choices and encourages complacency.
For the United States, effective competition begins with acceptance rather than denial. Strategy must be built on coexistence with a persistent peer competitor, not on wishful attrition or hopes of self-inflicted collapse. Abandoning the expectation of China’s failure is not a concession—it is the prerequisite for serious, disciplined, and realistic statecraft.
Rebuilding Judgment as the Foundation of National Power
The most consequential lesson of the post–Cold War era is not about technology, budgets, or industrial capacity, but about judgment. Since the early 1990s, the United States has not fundamentally lost power; it has lost epistemic discipline—the ability to see the world clearly, evaluate evidence soberly, and let reality constrain ambition. Tools can be rebuilt quickly. Judgment, once degraded, is far harder to restore.
A nation cannot prevail in a technological or strategic competition when its internal incentives systematically reward distortion. When political systems favor signaling over accuracy, media ecosystems privilege outrage over understanding, and policy institutions elevate loyalty above competence, decision-making becomes untethered from facts. In such an environment, errors compound not because information is unavailable, but because inconvenient truths are filtered out before they can influence action.
China’s relative advantage does not rest on moral superiority or ideological coherence. It lies in instrumental clarity. Problems are framed in concrete terms rather than abstract narratives. Success is evaluated through material outcomes, not rhetorical alignment. Failure, while costly, is treated primarily as a technical flaw to be corrected rather than as ideological betrayal to be denied. This approach does not eliminate mistakes, but it limits their persistence.
By contrast, a superpower endures only when it relearns the discipline of self-limitation. That discipline includes respecting constraints, counting real costs, and matching ambition to capacity. It requires institutions willing to measure results honestly and to abandon strategies that do not work, regardless of how compelling they sound. Most critically, it demands a political culture that allows reality to veto ideology.
Rebuilding tools without rebuilding judgment merely accelerates error. The deeper task before the United States is therefore not technological renewal alone, but cognitive renewal: restoring the habits of rigor, humility, and accountability that make power usable. Without that foundation, even the most advanced instruments will serve illusion rather than strategy.
Final Thoughts
The outcome of the U.S.–China technology race will not hinge on moral superiority, rhetorical skill, or the volume of mutual condemnation. It will be determined by more concrete capacities: the speed of building, the effectiveness of coordination, the durability of investment, and the ability to adapt under sustained pressure. The Cold War left the United States with comforting but misleading victory myths, while China internalized the harder lessons of long-term competition. The decisive question now is whether the United States can shed those myths in time—before they harden into a strategic and potentially terminal disadvantage.