I visited China 6 years ago (Hong Kong and Shenzhen).
My perception, as a European, was as if I was in the future.
Engineering wise they are on par or beyond Europeans. As an example: I collect TV field meter and have a respectable collection with devices from most manufacturers like Kathrein, Sefram, Televes, Rover Instruments and Promax.
All are European.
But the best field meter I own is the Deviser S7200. It features a full spectrum analyser and has all measurements you can think of, together with the best TS analyser implementation. It is fully developed and manufactured in China.
Now think of Rigol and Siglent. And the upcoming automotive revolution.
What happend is that Europe got lazy and busy with stuff like Gender, socialism and what not, while China was investing in infrastructure and planning ahead 10-20 years. We Europeans are planning ahead in 2 year cycles, to match the 4 year election cycle (2 years to steal all money and 2 years to do campaign for the nex election).
Another reason for our technical failure is the total disinvestment in military forces. As is known, the military application is a driving motor for R&D. We Europeans got lazy thinking that the US, under NATO, will take care of everything.
Europe either changes to a right wing governance and thrives for independence of China, or we are indeed doomed.
What technologies do you see being developed by the military that warrents throwing money at them to see economic growth? The trend is not to do general research since the Mansfield amendment in 1970.
Materials they develop stay super classified. Alloys, plastics, etc. Anything made for hypersonic and stealth related projects (big spending) is going to be highly classified for a long time because of national security.
I am not sure what you think the military is on the verge of discovering that's going to improve general industry.
Air logistics is something that is big spending, but its a nightmare to get benefits from this because of laws, ordinances, noise, danger, etc. Amazon is having shit luck at developing it. And it goes with robotics, its so easy to weaponize, they won't be doing anything really cool and available till they have good counter measures. Its probobly treated like having air superiority, or bot superiority. probobly means most of the developments are hush hush and restricted.
Cyber capabilities is god knows what, military unix admins. again cutting edge national security, the source code, algorithms, etc... highly classified and compartmentalized. Walmart aint gonna get the developments in database sorting and shit from them unless its some kinda encrypted service. On the plus side it means that infrastructure will be modern and maintained, which is important. Kind of like how the highway system (eisenhower) had some crazy original plot that was 'landing strips everywhere in ww3'.
hypersonics - yeah right, the materials are likely treated like stealth bomber skin (terribly classified)
directed energy weapons - maybe some bulked up degraded performance transmitters can be used for space RF beam down power one day. That is a super delayed return. I bet the first phase is gonna be about as successful as Indium internet sats (now its taking off with musk, but the first attempt was a really grievous financial failure)
3d printing - seems like the most useful development for general industry.
robotics - it seems the enemies of the USA are apt at using robotics. the military learned in ukraine that giving people robots means robots will be used against you. Not much barriers to it. Probably gonna be stunted. AI was supposed to be awesome or whatever but it turns out right off the bat their paranoid as hell about it being used against them.
I feel like the military has a poor return on investment due to lack of general research, which seems most useful. All the stuff they want needs to be largely classified to retain a operational advantage in war..... too many people are ready to implement it globally.
I think its wise to maintain reasonable spending here, but IMO its definitely not a way out of financial crisis.
if you increase their budget too much, then press them for returns after massive tech development, their gonna end up giving away some really dangerous stuff thats hard to use and causes instability. the technology won't be useless but that is not an efficient or wise use of money. if non military uses that extra money to make.. normal ? basic? technology, then you just have a general improvement. its kind of like getting weird ass food instead of more normal food. and the food is ghost pepper chocolate bars that give you a massive stomach ache