I just came across "The Edge of Automation"; a Substack written by Joe Ryu. It's a publication dedicated to Robotics, and the level of detail is fantastic.
For example: The Robotics Threshold: China's Rise, America's Reckoning is an absolute bible on the topic.
Top 10 Takeaways courtesy of o3 below, but the entire piece is worth reading for anyone keen on Robotics or US vs China dynamics:
Bullet Summary
- Automation as a civilizational threshold
True robotics (general-purpose mobile manipulation + physical AI) ends the scarcity of human physical labor, resetting productivity, supply chains, and power structures. Nations that cross this threshold gain autonomy; laggards face structural dependency. - Binary future: a few winners, many dependents
Because the productivity gap from full automation is vast, countries won’t cluster in the middle. Control over automated production becomes the new determinant of sovereignty and geopolitical weight. - China’s head start is systemic, not incidental
China couples massive deployment with state-guided standardization, deep component supply chains, and a huge bench of robotics firms. Real-world feedback loops and cost-down scale give it accelerating returns across hardware, software, and operations. - State–civil harmony as a force multiplier
Technocrats, long-horizon policy, resource diplomacy, and coordinated execution (from MIIT guidance to national testbeds) knit hardware, AI, logistics, and maintenance into a cohesive, rapidly compounding ecosystem. - Ecosystem depth beats point excellence
China’s edge spans the full stack—sensors, actuators, batteries, AI models, standards, factories, service networks, and fleet management—so breakthroughs diffuse quickly and costs fall. The U.S. has world-class labs but a thin, fragmented industrial base. - America’s core weaknesses are structural
Decades of deindustrialization, brittle logistics, skills shortages, missing post-production support (spares, service, fleet ops), and premature consolidation push U.S. firms toward expensive vertical integration still dependent on foreign components. - Physical AI is the bridge to AGI—and data gravity favors deployers
Frontier capability will come from learning in the real world. Dense robotic deployment generates the multimodal interaction data needed for generalization; whoever operates the largest fleets compounds AI advantage fastest. - The window is short and the change is non-linear
A first wave of limited robots will be followed quickly by a second wave with major cost and capability breakouts. Decisions in the next 8–10 years will lock in leadership tiers for decades. - A pragmatic U.S. path: three stages
(1) Build leverage at home—focus on durable hardware, unified software/agentic ops, standards, shared assets, and specialized services.
(2) Use that leverage to automate allied supply chains and form a U.S.-anchored regional bloc (Europe + East Asia + parts of Indochina), while keeping core robotics IP and assembly domestic.
(3) Reshore and integrate at scale—renew infrastructure, achieve Level-5 autonomous systems, and reach sustainable supply-chain sovereignty. - Strategic north star: sovereign automation to preserve Western prosperity
The goal isn’t incremental competitiveness; it’s an autonomous, self-evolving industrial base that restores productivity leadership and prevents “high-tech vassalage.” This demands technocratic coordination, hard tradeoffs, and urgency equal to the stakes.
