The increased tech rivalry and the race for dominance in artificial intelligence, robotics and critical technology between the United States and China have already redefined the global landscape of power equations and status, and this will not remain inside data centres alone.

This race is spilling into factories, warehouses, ports and wider physical infrastructures. The next phase of the AI race will involve the speed, volume and reliability of robots churned out, which will be used from helping with chores to being seen as the decisive factor in military edge.

Washington’s latest move restricting foreign-produced advanced robots, especially Chinese-made ones, is seen as critical for containing China’s edge in this area while also protecting domestic security from possible risks of espionage and the ultimate risk of these robots being used as a Trojan horse.

Beijing is pursuing an opposite strategy, wanting scale before the market fully matures. It does this by expanding volumes,  strengthening domestic suppliers, lowering costs and creating an integrated ecosystem embodying AI across batteries, solar technology, drones and electric vehicles where other Chinese companies have already gained an edge.

The Robotic Competition

The emerging robot competition is hence seen not as an equation of who produces the most in volume or sophistication, but more about the party controlling the machines, supply chains and standards that connect artificial intelligence to real battlefront stakes. Both Washington and Beijing understand the stakes involved.

The United States has learned an uncomfortable lesson: dependency is easiest to prevent before it becomes dependency. Once foreign technology has deeply integrated into national infrastructure, jettisoning it will be expensive and politically difficult.

This has increasingly shaped American strategy toward semiconductors, drones, critical minerals and other strategic technologies; now, robotics have joined the fray.

Earlier in July,  the US Federal Communications Commission placed foreign-produced advanced robotic devices on its Covered List, creating new barriers for foreign devices entering the American market to protect domestic economic, military and civil security amidst concerns about threats in various threat settings.

The concerns include surveillance, cyberattacks, supply-chain disruption and the risk of remote compromise.

A modern autonomous robot is fundamentally and structurally different from a conventional imported appliance of the past, and robots now have the ability to keep and process information they see, hear and connect to their surroundings. The fear is that these will give a strategic advantage to adversaries, just like a Trojan horse could. All these change the security equation, similar to the threats of cyber warfare and the calculations regarding TikTok and Huawei in the past.

For Washington, it has sensed that it would not want to wait until millions of such machines are operating throughout the economy before realising the reach and influence of the party controlling the software and the damage that could have been done.

The American approach is one of strategic denial: prevent risky dependency before scale is acquired. The two-pronged concern is that Chinese robots are seen as risky, potentially rivaling tech and military capacity, while simultaneously risking the loss of the robotics industry if the influx is not curbed.

China Possesses the Advantage 

China’s greatest strength in the robotics competition is not always assumed to be in the race for the best AI models, but more in its capacity to manufacture at the highest scale and volume.

In 2024, China manufactured almost 300,000 industrial robots, accounting for about 54% of global installations. The United States, by contrast, installed only around 34,000 industrial robots that same year. Scale can create its own technological advantage, giving greater leverage to China in this case.

Every robot deployed provides useful experience and gives manufacturers opportunities to improve components, further reduce prices and strengthen supplier networks.

This is the same advantage that helped China build greater momentum and  advantages in the battery, electric vehicle, and solar manufacturing industries; embodied AI magnifies this effect to complement the robotics industry.

Beijing is still not betting on what humanoids and robots can do today, but on the impact it will have when costs fall, capabilities improve and the scale of deployment reaches hundreds of thousands, even millions, of machines. The strategy is essentially to build scale before the economic structure based on embodied AI becomes fixed. Washington’s strategy, meanwhile, is to prevent that scale from becoming American dependence and trapping it in limited options.

Fear of the Trojan Horse

The fear of Chinese robots being the Trojan horse that can affect American and Western tech dominance and undermine cyber and military advantage will always be a strategic concern, despite attempts to view these fears as overblown.

Reported vulnerabilities in Chinese robotic platforms have validated and strengthened this concern by demonstrating how weak authentication, remote-access mechanisms or compromised backend services can potentially turn the machines into remotely accessible sensors.

The “Trojan Horse” fear is the possibility that low-cost but highly advanced machines could become deeply embedded in the American economy and domestic usage before Washington fully understands the entire system controlling their firmware, cloud services and remote access.

The broader objective is two-pronged: deny Chinese platforms the space to dominate America’s robotic and AI infrastructure while building a competitive US-and-allied embodied and supported AI ecosystem of its own.

The Next Competition Level

The United States still maintains the intelligence and power gap in AI models and reasoning capacities, by far, compared to others. This AI race with China will be the key battleground in determining who wins the global order in the new century. This remains one of the key reasons President Trump has dismissed recent concerns about the pace of AI development and the seemingly lack of guardrails and safeguards.   

American companies still maintain unmatched knowledge in many frontier AI systems, semiconductor design, cloud computing and private technological investment. Stanford estimations reflect US private investment in AI at roughly US$285.9 billion in 2025, exceeding many others. Washington retains major leverage in the brain of the emerging robotic economy ecosystem.

China, on the other hand, currently has the advantage in the body of the ecosystem, including the physical and hard infrastructure - factories, manufacturing workforce, industrial demand and the volume of deployment required to turn AI into physical machines.

This reflects the strategic dilemma: Washington cannot win on its own  if China still controls the overall industrial and manufacturing ecosystem.

China’s commercial success could also generate its own geopolitical resistance, with greater pressure to demonstrate that their systems are transparent and protected from external interference, although the rest of the world will be happy to get the best volume and prices.

The first AI competition was built upon the question of who will build the smartest machine, but the next equation will be about who can manufacture it at both scale and capability, to deploy it strategically, and to persuade the world to trust it. 

(The author is a Kuala Lumpur-based strategic and security analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at collins@um.edu.my.)