"Replicator is meant to help us overcome the PRC's biggest advantage, which is mass," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks in a keynote speech earlier this week. "More ships. More missiles. More people. Before Russia invaded Ukraine again in February, they seemed to have that advantage too."

America, she continued, doesn't "use our people as cannon fodder like some competitors do ... We out-match adversaries by out-thinking, out-strategizing, and out-maneuvering them ... Our real comparitive advantage ... is the innovation and spirit of our people."

Not the ~$900 billion annual budget, then, representing a solid 40% of the entire world's military spending and more than double the budgets of China and Russia combined? Righto then!