US-China Comparative Space Power Analysis - Tech Focused
In this report I conduct a comparative analysis of the spacepower capabilities of China and the United States, with a focus on technical prowess
A Comparative Analysis of China and the United States Industrial Military Base
There is a fictional account in the 1965 movie “Battle of the Bulge” in which a German military officer finds a chocolate cake for an American Soldier and comes to the sudden realization that the Germans have lost the war, as they will be unable to keep up with the far superior industrial base and logistic capacity of the Americans. While the Germans were starving in their own country, The US had the capacity to ship birthday cakes across the ocean to individual soldiers. This account is fictional, but it captured the mood of German soldiers during WW2 and highlighted that even the bravest and most experienced soldiers in the world cannot fight off superior logistics and supplies in a conventional war. B.H. Lidell Hart’s book “Strategy” while mainly highlighting the historical effectiveness in taking the indirect approach to warfare, could secondarily serve as an exercise and guide in attacking the “strategic heart” of the enemy, which in nearly all his examples translates to attacking supply lines and the industrial base (Hart, 2009). Whilst the underlying logic of military strategy remains consistent, the grammar has changed to fit the advancements in technology (Ziarnick, 2014, #L260).
To fully grasp the complexity of comparing the two largest space powers in the world we have to develop a framework in which to analyze them by. The United States military branches generally abide by the DIME model (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic) (Ziarnick, 2014, #L1450), which in general has been an accurate measure for judging the power base of any nation. China on the other hand has a secret methodology in which they rank countries and designate a score, whilst it is only possible to verify the algorithm used by the most elite members of the CCP, it could be assumed the rationale for their national initiatives are results of attempting to increase this number (Rolland, 2024). China has an increased focus on its manufacturing base, with Xi Jinping even stating that China will never deindustrialize (Wang & Kroeber, 2025) and that a large part of that is access to space (Drozhashchikh, 2018, #176), so we can assume that industrial capacity is a large part of the power calculation.
The “Economic” pillar could arguably be the most valuable aspect of DIME, as mentioned earlier, economic power has the ability to dominate militaries, tear down political and diplomatic systems, and in conjunction with the “Informational” pillar we create an unshakeable foundation that the “Military” pillar stands on and bolsters the “Diplomatic” to have actual legitimacy. If the DIME pillars are used as a measure of power, with Economic and Informational (arguably) being the most relevant to power currently, this sets the standardized target for which a framework can start to be developed for a comparative analysis. It can now be assumed we are looking for strong indicators of optimizing for those pillars, and the most powerful technologies today have big data and AI as their backbone, which then build into “smart systems” like IoT connected sensors, devices, and manufacturing tooling. This tech then builds into advanced manufacturing concepts and capabilities such as additive manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing) and capacity to build computer chips, which flow back into the industrial base to build more smart systems.
Big Data systems are those defined as extremely large datasets that grow exponentially over time (Big Data Defined: Examples and Benefits) and usually are measured with the “3 V’s”; volume, variety, velocity, i.e. “how big is it?”, “how diverse is it?”, and “how fast is it being generated?” (Kleppmann, 2017, #45). The industrial foundation of big data is a “datacenter” which is a large building that houses large computer servers, either owned and wholly used by a business or can be rented out virtually such as with Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure. Currently, the US has 53.7 Gigawatts of datacenter capacity to China’s 31.9, but the gap is rapidly closing as China has a significant amount of unused capacity (BN, 2025). McKinsey analysts predict this need to increase by 3.5x with most of the demand being driven by AI (Jean, 2025). With limitations in regards to power and environmental concerns of datacenters, businesses like Lonestar & Phison have already landed a datacenter the size of a shoebox on the moon (Jean, 2025). Increasingly, the demand for datacenters will come from off world needs, too, and the US already has a head start. More importantly, datacenters are the biggest input and success criteria for the AI revolution.
AI is the next step in the technology revolution and has already caused military strategists to realize we are on the cusp of not just a Military Technical Revolution (MTR), but a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Nowhere has this been more publicly prevalent than the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) as they are starting to give over control of their satellite systems to AI for traffic management purposes (Husain, 2024). This confidence is unprecedented, as the smallest miscalculation could cause a cascading debris field to wipe out several hundred satellites and cause certain portions of orbits to be uninhabitable. Yet, China was able to successfully prove that AI can manage orbital dynamics with ease. This should cause great concern for the US military, even if we had humans capable of piloting satellites better than AI, the latency of transmission due to distance would cause a disadvantage that Chinese AI could utilize in an adversarial situation. The US has tried to stop the progress of Chinese AI by limiting exports of GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) to China, but this has only made the Chinese more resourceful, producing AIs trained on a small number of apple computers, like DeepSeek, or AliBaba reducing GPU usage 82% with a new GPU pooling system (Chow, 2025). While China is catching up fast in the AI space and has shown to be far more resourceful than the US, it still lags in hardware and commercial prowess, but again, is catching up very quickly.
Just as there is the current “So what?”-isms about the actual impact of AI, given that Gartner in 2018 had previously estimated that 85% of AI projects would fail to produce any value by 2022 (Gartner, 2025), we are seeing poorly implemented AI get beaten out by companies that have successfully built either AI software or hardware get valued in the trillions of dollars. We are in the Edisonian phase of finding 1000 ways not to make a light bulb, and for better or worse are on the cusp of finding the correct way of doing it.
This will culminate in the digital world manipulating the physical. Digital Threads/Digital twins is a systems architecture that is more and more focused on implementing AI to manipulate and predict the creation of a digital version of the physical world. Ultimately, this will be a natural outcropping of using AI to efficiently manage real world systems. Early concepts of “Golden Dome” will heavily utilize the MBSE (Model Based Systems Engineering) philosophy of a digital twin, being able to simulate real-time conditions digitally, analyze it, then take real-world actions based upon digital simulations (Kelly, 2025). Due to these big data and AI systems integrations, we are already seeing large-scale manufacturing changes, where companies like Relativity Space are 3D printing their rockets (Terran R).
A comparative analysis then comes down to what can be best summed up as Andrew Marshall’s prediction of future warfare, which is dependent on Precision Strike capabilities and “Informational” warfare (Jones, 2025, #L1833). While the US has the current upper hand with AI Hardware and Software, their constant export controls on China have made China more resilient and independent, and have not hurt them as much as both Biden and Trump have intended. China can also take advantage of the stability in their political leadership, given that Xi Jinping wholly controls the country and Chinese Communist Party. If there is a conflict between the US and China, it won’t start with a bang, but a silent destruction of defense software.
References
Big Data Defined: Examples and Benefits. (n.d.). Google Cloud. Retrieved November 23, 2025, from https://cloud.google.com/learn/what-is-big-data
BN, A. (2025, August 3). U.S. and China Carry the Weight of Global Data Center Growth. Digital Information World. https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2025/08/us-and-china-carry-weight-of-global.html
Chow, V. (2025, October 18). Alibaba Cloud claims to slash Nvidia GPU use by 82% with new pooling system. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3329450/alibaba-cloud-claims-slash-nvidia-gpu-use-82-new-pooling-system
Drozhashchikh, E. (2018, November 8). China’s National Space Program and the “China Dream”. Astropolitics, (16), 175-186. 10.1080/14777622.2018.1535207
Gartner. (2025, February 13). Gartner Says Nearly Half of CIOs Are Planning to Deploy Artificial Intelligence. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-13-gartner-says-nearly-half-of-cios-are-planning-to-deploy-artificial-intelligence
Hart, B. H. L. (2009). Strategy. Editorial Benei Noaj.
Husain, A. (2024, November 14). China’s Fast Growing Military Space Capabilities. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amirhusain/2024/11/14/chinas-fast-growing-military-space-capabilities/?
Jean, S. (2025, August 18). The future of data storage? Look up. The Space Review. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5043/1
Jones, S. G. (2025). The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Sources of Great Power Dominance. Oxford University Press, Incorporated.
Kelly, K. (2025, August 26). Aerial defense 2.0: Why speed, scale and survival define the Golden Dome era. SpaceNews. https://spacenews.com/aerial-defense-2-0-why-speed-scale-and-survival-define-the-golden-dome-era
Kleppmann, M. (2017). Designing Data-intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems. O’Reilly Media.
Rolland, N. (2024, September 12). “Positioning” China: Power and Identity. Mapping China’s Strategic Space. https://strategicspace.nbr.org/positioning-china-power-and-identity/
Terran R. (n.d.). Relativity Space. Retrieved November 23, 2025, from https://www.relativityspace.com/terran-r
Wang, D., & Kroeber, A. (2025, August 19). The Real China Model: Beijing’s Enduring Formula for Wealth and Power. Foreign Affairs. Retrieved November 12, 2025, from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/real-china-model-wang-kroeber
Ziarnick, B. (2014). Developing National Power in Space: A Theoretical Model. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers.