How China Might Save America from Itself

Curbing the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Caption: Cartoon illustration by Chat GPT-5 and DALL.E of a U.S. military officer offerring cash to a Chinese dockworker, who refuses beside a crate marked 'Rare Earths – No Export', symbolizing how money can’t buy what isn’t for sale.

Introduction: Eisenhower’s Warning

In January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the American people. A career general who had led the Allies in World War II, he was no stranger to war. Yet his parting words were not about victory, but about a danger growing at home. He warned against the rise of what he called the military-industrial complex—a union of arms makers, the Pentagon, and politicians who would feed on fear, drain the treasury, and entrench themselves in power.^[1]

More than sixty years later, his warning reads less like prophecy than like a diagnosis. America spends more on defense than the next ten nations combined. The Pentagon has failed audit after audit, with trillions of dollars unaccounted for.^[2] Endless wars have left Americans weary, yet the machine rolls on.^[3] Citizens own more guns than any people in history,^[4] but when it comes to restraining their own war industry, they are powerless.^[5]

If Americans cannot save themselves from this machine, who can? The answer may come from the one place Washington least expects: China.

Section 1: The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex Today

The numbers are staggering. America spends nearly $900 billion a year on defense.^[6] That is more than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and several European powers combined. Every year, Congress approves more, often with bipartisan support. Military spending is stitched into the fabric of every state—factories, bases, and contracts spread wide to make cuts politically impossible.^[7]

This system is not just large. It is wasteful. Since 1990, the Pentagon has never passed a full audit. Analysts estimate that since 2000, more than $30 trillion in transactions cannot be properly traced—“unsupported adjustments” in the language of government reports. No other agency could survive such failures, but the defense budget only grows.^[8]

At home, politicians justify this as safety. Abroad, they call it leadership. But in practice it has become self-perpetuating: contracts feed companies, companies fund lobbyists, and lobbyists press for more contracts. It is exactly the cycle Eisenhower feared—an industry that thrives on tension, not peace.

And yet there is a deeper truth: all the money in the world cannot buy what America no longer controls—the materials and supply chains that make weapons possible.

Section 2: The Limits of Money

For decades, America’s answer to every challenge has been the same: spend more. When a crisis hits, Washington writes bigger checks. When a war drags on, Congress passes another defense bill. The United States is the only country on earth that can run trillion-dollar deficits year after year without collapsing, because the world runs on dollars. So long as other nations need dollars for trade and reserves, the U.S. can keep printing them.

But money cannot conjure matter. A trillion digital dollars cannot become a single missile without the minerals and metals that make one. Rare earths like neodymium and terbium go into fighter jet engines and precision bombs. Gallium and germanium are essential for semiconductors. Titanium strengthens airframes. These are not numbers on a screen. They are elements dug from the ground, refined with complex chemistry, and forged into parts by skilled hands.

Herin lies the weakness: America controls the dollars, but not the resources. China dominates the processing of rare earths, holding about 90 percent of global capacity.^[9] Even when ore is mined in Australia or the United States, it is often shipped to China for purification. Without those materials, the U.S. defense industry stalls.

This flips the equation. The U.S. can outspend every rival, but spending cannot replace what it no longer produces. The empire of U.S. currency meets the empire of materiality—and materiality wins.

Section 3: China’s Brilliant Maneuver

China has not tried to outspend America ship for ship or plane for plane.^[10] It has chosen a quieter path—control the chokepoints of supply. In 2010, after a clash with Japan in the East China Sea, Beijing restricted rare earth exports. Prices soared and Japan blinked.^[11] More recently, in 2023, China imposed new controls on gallium and germanium, metals crucial for advanced semiconductors, in direct response to U.S. chip sanctions.^[12] The message was clear: you can sanction us, but we can squeeze you where it hurts too.

This is not bluster. It is strategy. By commanding the refining and processing of key materials, China has the power to decide who can make advanced weapons and at what pace. It does not need to match America’s defense budget dollar for dollar. It only needs to limit the flow of the inputs that turn budgets into bombs.

The brilliance lies in the asymmetry. America is trapped in a system where defense spending is politically untouchable, yet those dollars cannot be fully translated into usable power without Chinese cooperation. Washington can print all the ones and zeroes it likes, but a fighter jet still needs titanium alloys, a missile still needs rare earth magnets, and a chip still needs gallium.

This is the quiet checkmate. By mastering the base of the supply chain, China can curb the very machine Eisenhower once warned about—not with force of arms, but with the leverage of matter over money.

Section 4: The Paradox of Salvation

It is a strange thought: that America’s chief rival could also be its rescuer. Yet that is where the logic leads. By limiting the flow of critical materials, China may be doing for Americans what they cannot do for themselves—forcing the military-industrial complex to slow down.

If the U.S. cannot endlessly restock munitions, it cannot fight endless wars. If defense contractors cannot secure the metals they need, they cannot churn out weapons at will. The machine that has devoured trillions may finally be brought under restraint, not by Congress, not by protest, but by the hard limits of supply.

And this restraint could be a blessing. Every dollar that cannot be wasted on another foreign war is a dollar that might be spent at home—on roads, schools, health care, clean energy. Every contract that stalls in the Pentagon is an opening for investment in the real economy. By clipping the wings of the war machine, China could push America back toward living within its means.

This is the paradox: the rival America paints as a threat may, in practice, save it from self-destruction. Eisenhower’s warning might finally be answered, not by American reform, but by Chinese leverage. The 'enemy' could become the brake that brings America back to earth.

Section 5: A World Beyond the Dollar & the Bomb

For nearly eighty years, U.S. power has rested on two pillars: the dollar and the bomb. The dollar gave America financial reach, letting it fund deficits that would sink any other nation. The bomb gave it military reach, letting it project force into every corner of the globe. Together they created a system where America could borrow without limit and threaten without pause.

But both pillars are beginning to crack. De-dollarization is still gradual, but real: more trade is being settled in yuan, rupees, and local currencies; central banks are buying gold at record levels; BRICS countries are openly planning alternatives to SWIFT. The dollar is still dominant, but no longer untouchable.

On the military side, the same erosion is underway. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed the limits of force. The conflict in Ukraine has exposed how quickly modern munitions can be burned through, and how slow restocking can be. And now, with China holding the keys to rare earths and strategic minerals, the material foundation of U.S. military supremacy is no longer secure.

This shift does not mean global collapse. It may mean the opposite: a world less dependent on one country’s currency and less vulnerable to one country’s arsenal. It opens space for multipolar balance, where power is shared rather than hoarded. The age of the dollar and the bomb as absolute guarantors of U.S. dominance may be ending—but with it could end the cycle of wars waged because they were affordable, not because they were necessary.

Section 6: Conclusion – Eisenhower’s Answer at Last

When Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, he hoped Americans would guard against it themselves. They did not. Decade by decade, the complex grew into the nation’s largest industry, its most sacred budget and its least accountable institution. Wars came and went, audits failed, trillions disappeared, and still the machine pressed forward.

Yet history is full of ironies. The force Eisenhower feared may not be broken by the citizens it burdens, but by the rival it threatens. China, by controlling the materials of war, holds a brake America cannot remove. It cannot be lobbied, bought, or voted out. It is structural, physical, real.

This is not a story of conquest, but of constraint. America’s greatest adversary may also be the one to make it grow up—to live within limits, to redirect its vast resources toward building instead of destroying. The world may yet look back and see that the 'checkmate' was not the end of America’s power, but the saving of its soul.

Eisenhower’s warning may finally be answered. Not by Washington, not by Congress, not even by the American people—but by the stubborn logic of matter over money and by a rival strong enough to force restraint where self-restraint failed.^[13]

Colocracy

by John Mackay

An introduction to what’s broken in modern governance—and importantly how easy it is to build something better.

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