How technological development generates strategic advantage and how the gaps in the process can be weaponized: Implication for the U.S.-China rivalry

Leading-edge technologies have risen to the mainstage of great power competition, yet how technological development translates into strategic advantage remains both understudied and undertheorized. Scholarship is skewed toward innovation ecosystems and -races, at the expense of institutional setup, productization and deployment. I address this gap with a six-phase framework systematizing the process from innovation to strategic advantage. I identify critical gaps at each phase—drawing on literature of their respective fields of science—and provide examples where these caused multi-year delays or altogether prevented strategic gain. Drawing from Chinese scholarly literature, I then apply the framework to China’s efforts to generate strategic advantage from technological development and discuss the U.S.’ opportunities to weaponize them to impede China’s effectiveness.