I disagree with both assertions. Unless any major breakthroughs in AI come along, you need a lot of people to create light, sweet crude data. China has multiple

I disagree with both assertions. Unless any major breakthroughs in AI come along, you need a lot of people to create light, sweet crude data. China has multiples of the U.S. population, and is an expansive surveillance state gathering up every bit the internet has to offer, in contrast to the increasingly privacy-sensitive West. Given current trends in deep learning, those two factors alone give China an enormous advantage over the U.S. Likewise, arguing that AI/software can supplant wealth in warfare is laughable. An example could be 9/11. The total cost to Al-Qaeda was a rounding error compared to the trillions spent in Afghanistan (and later, Iraq). And I have read anecdotes of U.S. Marines in Iraq recalling how insurgents managed to waste millions (if not billions) by firing one rocket at a Marine base then fleeing, all while the entire base has to shut down operations to dig in and defend, even if the lone attacker is long gone by the time anybody’s in position. And yet neither Al-Qaeda or ISIS or even the United States itself has managed to fully and definitely declare peace and go home without a new insurgency rising up in their wake. In short, a power with little relative wealth or population - even with sophisticated software and AI - could never be any more than an expensive nuisance to the larger powers.