He told the New York Times that he thinks the U.S. will “very likely” find itself in a three-front war with China, Russia, and Iran. As a result, he said, the Pentagon should continue developing autonomous weapons at full speed, pointing to big mismatches in how far the U.S. would be willing to go while fighting a war compared with other countries.
I wasn't even thinking about that kind of thing, since drones are something I'm sure we could utilize as well. It's mostly the sheer production capacity and population that China in particular has. I expect an actual large scale war against them, that both didn't turn nuclear (since that renders the whole concept of a victor a bit moot) and wasn't some very quick defensive action like an attempt to defend Taiwan might be (which might end fast enough for production capacity to not matter as much as existing inventory), would end up looking something like Japan's war against the US during ww2: we might be able to cause a great deal of damage to their military assets at first, but if they can replace their losses much faster than we can, then all they have to to is drag things out enough for the numbers to swing decisively in their favor.