American defense ‘Made in China’: Is Washington ready for war with Beijing – or is very dependent to fight?
Despite years of warnings and efforts, the United States defense industrial base has become dangerously dependent on China, one day it may face a day in war. A new report by Data Analytics firm Govini has a great picture of the readiness of America’s war, questioning: Can America really maintain conflict with China, or is it very entangled in its rival supply chains?The report shows that Chinese firms supplied one of the ten important components for major US defense programs, including missile defense, nuclear systems, and space technology. This highlights how to woven Beijing industries in the US military supply chains, with special dependence on Chinese-made parts in missile defense, and on important minerals that dominate China’s production.
Chinese part in US defense
According to Govini’s national security scorecard released this week, Chinese firms have been known by 9.3% primary contractors for major US defense programs in nine important areas in 2024 as Tier 1 suppliers. These areas include aviation, sea, command and control systems, atoms, missile defense and space.The report further mentions how deeply the Chinese suppliers were embedded in important military supply chains. The missile defense sector, the key to protect the US from attack, was the highest dependence: 11.1% of the Tier 1 suppliers were Chinese. Even the nuclear region, where security bets are at their highest level, are counted for 7.8% components on Chinese suppliers, more than any other foreign country.
‘America is not ready for war with China’
Govini’s CEO said, “The United States is not ready for the war that China said, we may have to enter, ‘Today is the day”.While the dependence is clear, it is not so simple to completely eliminate Chinese suppliers. Dafri warned against watching dickuping as a silver bullet. “I am also not sure to erase the supply chain to China,” he said, “I think it is about dissecting these platforms that are important and what is not.”According to the report, an area of special concern was significant minerals. Noted that hundreds of arms systems, from jets to ships, depended on minerals such as antimes, gallium, germanium, tungsten and telurium. China dominates the global production of these materials. In fact, Govini found that 78% of American weapons systems could be affected by Chinese export curb on these minerals. This vulnerability was exposed by recent restrictions of Beijing on rare earth exports as part of its broader technology and business tension with Washington.
