China girl, a three part series on how China mobilizes women in defense technology to innovate, outpace, and beat the U.S. (currently) through gender parity in labor
How to lose a superpower competition in three easy steps: a homecoming story and the introduction to my China girl series of analysis on gender/defense tech/labor markets/innovation economics
America is a dizzying place to be, or to come back to, or maybe it always was inherently.
When I left America, I had never heard of drone fireworks shows. Apparently these are a thing now.
When I left America, ChatGPT had not been released to the public and large language models were not a ubiquitous part of daily life - people still hand wrote their own LinkedIn posts. Apparently these are a relic now (Slop Intensifying ™).
When I left America, there was no war in Ukraine or Gaza, and Hafez al-Assad’s tomb had not yet been set on fire. Apparently this dizzying speed of geopolitical change instantly shared real-time live is our new multipolar normal now.
Perhaps it is just the change in sea level and the fact that I’m constantly out of breath since everywhere is uphill and I just spent four years in the Netherlands where a mountain is a myth. Reader, I left America only for 1,430 days in total. It has been 121 days since I’ve returned.
When I returned to America, I encountered family, friends, family friends, some friends who are family and some family who I would not be friends with. In fact, one of my first dinners back featured a surprise appearance by what I can only deem the Adversarial Armenian Aunt (trademark pending) who is the embodiment of a masterclass in psy ops. I have not seen this person in well over a decade, but within five minutes of sitting down, I experienced first hand what I can only describe as a full tactical interrogation disguised as familial concern.
I’m sitting there jetlagged and disoriented after also having had significant luggage lost, but like a herd of gazelles or stampedes of bulls, there’s a certain beauty and terror to observing the certain type of amorphous yet salient powerful phenomena such a skilled manipulator posses. I remember just thinking to myself immediately that this woman needs to be running In-Q-Tel or something (In-Q-Tel is the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm). The Armenian auntie network for surveillance is something else. Get on that, people, these are skills honed over thousands of years of busybodies doing what they know best, and it would make for excellent SaaS (Secret Sharing as a Service).
I also caught up with old friends, including one of the best game players I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. A friend of mine constantly strategically outmaneuvers me all the time in Jenga and I absolutely love it. She’ll pull a piece from some impossible angle and the whole tower just stays up. This woman builds and builds and builds without batting an eyelash, without bated breath, without breaking a sweat.
Meanwhile I’m over here holding my breath thinking the thing’s going to collapse any second. I asked her the first time we ever played Jenga how on earth she kept this up, and she simply replied deadpan that it’s her “Chinese wisdom.” This has become one of our in-jokes now throughout the years. She is cunning, cutting, and clear. You want her on your team because you will win. She strategically outmaneuvers me all the damn time, and I absolutely love, love, love it.
Yet I doubt this is something to love on a mass scale of warfare, and that’s exactly what is happening if we switch out my friend and I for the symbolism of China and the U.S. as countries.
Pressingly, at a national security conference I attended at Stanford right after running into Adversarial Armenian Auntie (™ pending) and making plans to see my friend, I noticed a topic entering the chat across panels, over and over, was China. Defense tech start-up best practices? China’s innovation velocity.
Re-industrialization? China’s manufacturing scale and ability to move from prototype to production in a fraction of the time it takes us. AI? China’s integration of civilian and military technology. China entered the chat over and over and over - how do we compete? How do we move faster, how do we not fall behind, how do we X and Y to achieve American Military Domination American Dynamism American Winning American You Name It, We Won (™ also pending). Whether it be moonshots or mining materials, as above, so below, the sense of urgency was palpable on every level of iteration and discussion and desire to win.
You could feel it in the rooms. This sort of existential yearning and dread mixed with this weird techno-optimism that somehow we’ll figure it out because we always do. Except we’re not figuring it out. If we did, we wouldn’t be having these conversations to begin with.
Even more interestingly and pressingly, I also noticed that this conference had 12 panels with 40 speakers. 37 out of the 40 speakers were men.
And it was so clear to me immediately: I bet some solutions to innovation are simply not being discussed because you’re missing half the perspectives in the room.
How do we compete? How do we move faster? How do we not fall behind? How do we ensure America continues winning when we’ve shut out half of America’s talent from contributing to the innovation fueling the wins we’re chasing?
During the conference lunch, I kept thinking about my Chinese friend and her Jenga skills, and how was she strategically outmaneuvering me? That’s what’s happening right now on a mass scale in defense technology innovation. China is pulling pieces from angles we’re not even considering. They’re building higher and higher and the tower isn’t collapsing. Meanwhile we’re sitting in rooms full of men talking about how to compete while actively demonstrating why we’re losing. We’re trying to play Jenga with half the pieces still voluntarily left in the box.
China mobilizes its entire technical workforce including nearly 50% of their 2.85 million STEM researchers who are women as well as non-highly educated laborers. They’re all in. They’re locked in. They are in it together. Yet we don’t. We’re not yet all in. Our mobilization is fractured at the moment due to multiple factors, and the Jenga tower of our competition is looming while we’re losing with partially built structures.
This three-part series will examine how innovation economics and competition policy intersect with gender as a strategic imperative in defense technology , and why this matters deeply for future policy making and AI governance. Part 1 quantifies China’s structural advantages through broader workforce integration and the measurable innovation outcomes that result. Part 2 analyzes the policies and institutional failures causing America to voluntarily restrict its own talent base through cultural barriers, policy constraints, and bureaucratic inertia. Part 3 extracts lessons for AI governance, where identical vetting requirements and talent access challenges will determine which nations can develop advanced AI systems at the scale and speed required for strategic competition.
I’m interested in taking on a multi-disciplinary approach to think about innovation from questioning and developing a thesis on this issue. Specifically, I’m curious about what we can learn regarding innovation by examining an adversarial geopolitical situation involving technology, economics, and policy choices. As such, this series of posts will examine the proverbial Jenga tower through an economic analysis of how artificial labor market constraints create quantifiable competitive disadvantages. The math is straightforward, the implications are profound, and we all know what happens when a Jenga tower tips over.
Part 1 drops this week on Monday morning (November 10th).
Reader note: This is analysis of innovation economics, competition policy, and governance frameworks. For comments/consulting inquiries, reach me at ani@anibruna.com.