The most dependent economies have already been cut off, so yeah probably lol

It might. This contest has demonstrated more than anything that the United States is generations ahead of other leading powers. Russia is going to get even more desperate.

"Generations ahead" ? This is a bit much, IMHO.
More like an clear milotary advance and high numbers which is the results of gigantic defense budget on decades, which could itself vanish pretty quickly in various situations like: global crisis, internal political crisis, major changes in global military warfare, global technology discoveries. Or all together.

This post was edited by Meanwhile on Oct 21 2022 10:05pm

None of that threatens our military dominance.

Global crisis is solved by military in part. Political crisis has no way to unfund the military when both sides want to fund it. Global military warfare and technology discoveries are driven by our military.

Yes, Russia has proven to be a paper tiger, but it would be a mistake to infer that this is also true for other nations challenging the Western-led global order.
Also, let's not lose sight of our own glaring vulnerabilities that this conflict has exposed. From our sustained dependency on energy supplies from authoritarian countries over vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure to the sheer edge that terrorism against civilians can provide, this war has unveiled a lot of potential tactics for our future adversaries.

China is the only one of any concern and they are almost exclusively a copying power. They do very little r&d so they're perpetually a generation behind

A chart on the patent rivalry between the U.S. and China that I stumbled across just yesterday, sorry that I couldn't find an English version (look below for a translation of the labels):



Share of high-tech patents:

AI
Robotics
Internet of things
Solar panels
3D-printing
Drones
Big Data
Nanotechnology
5G
Blockchain
Genetic engineering
Total

So if this chart is to be believed, China is actually competitive in several fields of high-tech r&d.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 22 2022 09:04am

Patents aren't a great way to determine this. China is huge on state sponsored corporate espionage to bypass R&D requirements.

China isn't irrelevant in the world of R&D, but they punch way below their weight class in terms of GDP and population, and in terms of military R&D they are overwhelmingly focused on copying instead of innovating.

Doesn't this mean that their technology output (either stolen or developed by themselves) is underestimated by their patent numbers?


Of course they punch below their weight in terms of R&D as of today, that's typical for emerging nations which are in the process of transitioning from an economy based on cheap labor to one based on innovation and high productivity. They are of course still lagging behind today - what I disagree with is this notion that they are destined to always remain hopelessly behind the West in terms of R&D. Over the coming decades, it is perfectly conceivable for them to take over the technological leadership in a variety of fields.

I doubt that. Asians, especially the Chinese, don't have what it takes to be innovators. It's a genetically determined limitation. And I am Asian myself.

People see that today's China has made lots of progress in many fields and draw the conclusion that they will eventually take over the US in every way. Not so.

This post was edited by JessiWan on Oct 22 2022 11:46am