Key Takeaways:
- Washington is trying to block foreign—especially Chinese—advanced robots before they sit inside U.S. factories and ports. In July the FCC put them on its Covered List over surveillance, cyberattack, supply-chain disruption, and remote compromise, the same logic used on TikTok and Huawei. A robot stores what it sees and hears; the fear is firmware and cloud access after the machines are already in place.
- China’s edge, the author says, is scale. In 2024 it made almost 300,000 industrial robots (~54% of world installations); the United States installed about 34,000. That volume-and-cost path is compared to batteries, EVs, solar, and drones. Beijing is betting on cheaper machines in the hundreds of thousands, then millions, before the market hardens.
- Stanford-cited U.S. private AI spend: about $285.9 billion in 2025. America still leads models, chips, and cloud; China leads plants and deployed machines. Two aims named: keep Chinese platforms off U.S. robot infrastructure, and build a U.S.–allied stack. Next test: who can make, field, and get others to trust the hardware.
The increased tech rivalry and the race for dominance in the sphere of artificial intelligence, robotics and critical technology between the United States and China have already redefined the global landscape of power equation and status, and this will not remain inside data centres alone. This race is spilling into factories, warehouses, ports and the wider physical infrastructures, and the next phase of the AI race will involve the speed, volume and reliability of robots churned out that will be used from helping with chores to being seen as the decisive factor in military edge.
Washington’s latest move in restricting foreign-produced advanced robots, especially Chinese made, is both seen as critical in ensuring that China’s edge in this front is contained while also protecting domestic security from the 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 across batteries, solar technology, drones and electric vehicles where other Chinese companies have already gained an edge.
The emerging robot competition is hence being seen as not the equation of who produces the most in volume or in terms of sophistification, but more about the party controlling the machines, supply chains and standards that connect artificial intelligence to the real battlefront stakes.And both Washington and Beijing understand the stakes involved.
Washington Is Trying to Close the Door Early
The United States has learned an uncomfortable lesson, that 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, and now robotics have joined the fray.
Earlier in July, the US Federal Communications Commission placed foreign-produced advanced robotic devices on its Covered List, and this created new barriers for foreign devices in entering the American market, to protect domestic economic, military and civil security amidst concerns that these can pose in various threat settings.
The concerns include surveillance, cyberattack, 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 connecting to surroundings. The fear is that these will give strategic advantage to adversaries, just like what a Trojan horse could do. 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 asking or realising the reach and influence of the party that is in control of the software and the damage that could have been done.
The American approach is seen as one of strategic denial: prevent risky dependency before the scale is acquired.The two-pronged concern is that Chinese robots are seen as risky that will rival tech and military capacity,while at the same time also there is a risk of losing the robotics industry if the influx is not curbed.
China Already Possesses the Advantage America Fears
China’s greatest strength in the robotics competition is not always assumed to be in the race for the best AI models, but more on the capacity to manufacture at the highest scale and volume.
In 2024, China manufactured almost 300,000 industrial robots, around 54 per cent of global installations. The United States, by contrast, installed only around 34,000 industrial robots in that same year. Scale can create its own technological advantage, and this case, giving greater leverage for China.
Every robot deployed provides useful experience and it gives manufacturers opportunities to improve components,to further reduce prices and strengthen supplier networks.
This is the same advantage that helped China build greater momentum and advantages in the industries of batteries, electric vehicles and solar manufacturing, and the embodied AI magnifies this effect to complement the robotics industry.
Beijing is still not betting on what humanoids and robots can do today, but betting on the impact it will have when costs fall, capabilities improve and the scale of deployment reaches hundreds of thousands, and reaching millions of machines. The strategy is essentially to build scale before the economic structure on embodied AI is eventually becoming fixed. Washington’s strategy, meanwhile, is to prevent that scale from becoming American dependence and being trapped in options.
Fear of the Trojan Horse
The fear of the Chinese robots being the Trojan horse that can affect the American and Western tech dominance and also in undermining the cyber and military advantage will always be of strategic concern, despite attempts to view them as overblown.
Reported vulnerabilities in Chinese robotic platforms have validated and strengthened the concern, by demonstrating how weak authentication, remote-access mechanisms or compromised backend services can potentially turn the machines into a remotely accessible sensor.
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 and setting before Washington fully understands the entire system of who controls their firmware, cloud services and remote access.
The broader objective is two-pronged, to 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.
America Has the Brain, China Has the Body
The United States still maintains the intelligence and power gap in AI models and reasoning capacities, by far, in comparison with others. This AI race will be the key battleground in determining the triumph of the new century in who wins the global order. This remains one of the key reasons President Trump has dismissed the recent concerns on 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, where estimations by Stanford reflect US private investment in AI at roughly US$285.9 billion in 2025, above many others. Washington retains major leverage in the brain of the emerging robotic economy ecosystem.
China, on the other hand, has the current advantage on the body of the ecosystem, including the physical and hard infrastructure including factories, manufacturing workforce, industrial demand and the volume of deployment required to turn AI into physical machines.
This reflects the strategic dilemma, where 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, and 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.
