In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense can admit that the production capacity of China's shipbuilding industry is now 230 times that of the United States. This incident at least shows one truth. Americans are facing this gap themselves, rather than avoiding it. Let's imagine, if this happened to China, would we have the courage to expose ourselves?
Chinese ancients have said, shameful and courageous, but it is easy to say it is difficult to do, I now fear that Americans don't really put this phrase under our eyes to practice, I don't know.
Some signs are detectable, and today we will talk about some signs from the United States.
The first sign comes from within the United States, which is the rise of the U.S. "new military industry" giant Anduril Industries-it concerns Gregory Kausner, former deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. Kausner), and Neil Thurgood, a lieutenant general who has served in the U.S. Army for nearly 40 years and the first director of the Army's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO).
There is a proper term in the political and military circles of the United States, called "revolving door", which refers to some military leaders who retire and directly enter military enterprises to serve as senior officials, and then these senior officials of military enterprises will re-enter the military and political circles someday. Kausner and Thurgood are two figures who are involved in the "revolving door".
Previously, after serving as Deputy Director of DSCA for more than 3 years, Kosner served as the Executive Director of the Department of International Cooperation of the Office of Procurement and Security of the Ministry of Defense, and was temporarily responsible for procurement and security for 14 months, as the Deputy Minister of Military and Industrial Procurement, in charge of U.S. military weapons systems R & D and procurement, defense industry foundation, international arms sales (FMS), contract management, logistics, nuclear security, military energy and the environment.
At the end of March 2022, Kausner joined Anduril as its global defense director. Kausner has always been a representative of Pentagon reformers, believing that "today's security challenges require new technologies and new methods." He joined Anduril with the US military's embrace of new technologies and the expectation of procurement mechanism reform. Anduril's cooperation with Saudi military industrial enterprises is his masterpiece.
And so does Anduril's other senior vice president, Neil Thurgood. Before retiring, Lieutenant General Neil Thurgood served as the head of the U.S. Army's hypersonic, space, directed energy and rapid procurement programs, and was responsible for leading a budget of more than $4 billion for innovation and advanced technology development. He completed the U.S. Army's first operational deployment of hypersonic weapons.
Thurgood joined Anduril as an “organisation dedicated to solving the key problems faced by combat personnel as quickly as possible through innovation,” and he was in charge of managing the air and ground deterrence departments at Anduril, with the main focus on anti-drone systems, anti-aircraft missile systems, rocket engines, tactical weapons and mission systems, and more.
Joining such a senior U.S. military technology senior leader, his rich experience in the field of weapons procurement has raised the company’s management and execution, production and delivery capabilities of large-scale defense projects. In particular, he also has a clear understanding and professional judgment of cutting-edge disruptive defense technologies such as anti-drone, high-speed, laser weapons, which also makes Anduril the “new military engineer” more enthusiastic to undertake larger and more important defense projects.
During the defense ministry's entry, the comparative achievement was to equip the U.S. Army with the high-speed hypersonic missile weapons system "Dark Eagle", which is the U.S. Army's few new equipment in recent years, especially compared to the Air Force Navy's similar projects, "Dark Eagle" success is more difficult.
Look, in order to rapidly improve the strength of arms race and strategic competition with the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the U.S. defense system is undergoing solid reforms. Not only Cosner and Thurgood, but now senior Pentagon officials like U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll are also calling for the reform of the "inside the fortress" of the Ministry of National Defense to take place as soon as possible.
Driscoll called on American "new military industries" like Anduril: There is an urgent need for small and medium-sized enterprises, garage entrepreneurs, venture capital companies, etc. from the Midwestern United States to enter the Pentagon.
Randy George, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, is also a reformist, saying the U.S. Army's procurement approach is being reformed to focus on rapid delivery and proactively embrace commercial drone technology. The U.S. Army has become more flexible in its procurement process when purchasing drones installed in large numbers in grassroots units, and has more diverse product sources. It will choose more products from commercial companies and start-ups.
The U.S. Army has super operational capabilities. It has made many adjustments around troop needs and expenditure priorities, and drastically cut off redundant projects, creating greater possibilities for "new military industry" companies like Anduril to further explore the market.
Anduril is an emerging U.S. military-industrial enterprise, founded in 2017, focused on defense technology development and services, focusing on artificial intelligence, drone systems and autonomous weapons research and development, core products including autonomous surveillance tower (AST), Altis (ALTIUS) cruise missiles and synchronous operational drones, has been included by the Ministry of Commerce of China in the export control list and the list of unreliable entities in January 2025.
In December last year, Anduril established a cooperation with OpenAI and formed an industry alliance with Palantier to specifically solve the artificial intelligence application problems of the U.S. Department of Defense. Now, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has imposed property freezing and entry restrictions on five senior executives, including its CEO Brian Schempf and Chief Operating Officer Matthew Grim. In a sense, the "new military industries" such as Anduril and Palantier are more representative of the future of the American defense industry than Boeing and Loma, and they also pose a greater threat to China.
There is also a sign that it comes from outside the United States, such as Finland.
In October, at an important meeting in Washington on the U.S. polar strategic layout, the U.S. Coast Guard received a generous gift-its plan to build 11 new icebreakers was officially finalized. Four will be built by Finnish shipyards, and the other seven will be manufactured by U.S. shipyards. In order to break the curse of the 1:230 disparity in production capacity with China, Finland has also joined the ranks of helping the United States fight against China.
This time, the ship construction cooperation between the United States and Finland is a large-scale investment, with an investment of US$6.1 billion. Finland will first start the construction of four "Arctic Security Patrol Ships" in domestic high-tech shipyards, and the United States will, with the assistance of the Finnish technical team, simultaneously advance the construction of seven other icebreakers at its own Davie and Bollinger shipyards in Texas and Louisiana.
The plan's first icebreaker is expected to be delivered in 2028. Now Finnish shipyards are brightly lit all night long, and the production scene is in full swing. The entry into service of these new warships will greatly expand the U.S. Coast Guard's polar fleet, and the United States 'operational capabilities and strategic deterrence in the polar regions will be significantly improved.
During World War II, Finland built and delivered more than 500 ships to the Soviet Union with astonishing efficiency. It has always been a country with professional shipbuilding capabilities. Finland's commitment to supporting the construction of U.S. icebreakers has been a threat to China and Russia, which have continued to deepen cooperation in the Arctic region in recent years. It is a new impact. Therefore, by 2026, if we say that the gap in shipbuilding production capacity between China and the United States is 230 times, it will be extremely wrong, because things are slowly changing.
In addition, there is another sign that also occurs outside the United States. On October 14, 2025, on the same day that the United States imposed additional port fees on China ships, China's Ministry of Commerce announced that it would include five American subsidiaries of Hanwha Marine in South Korea on the counter-list and prohibit any person or organization in China from doing business with them.
The five companies are Hanwha Shipping, Hanwha Philadelphia Shipbuilding, Hanwha Ocean America International, Hanwha Shipping Holdings, and Hanwha America Holdings. As a Korean military giant, Hanwha Ocean wants to take both ends, expand its military industry in the US market and keep its commercial use in the Chinese market. Now that they have lost their Chinese business, China has begun to pay attention to it.
According to the Jones Act passed by the United States in 1920, goods transported between U.S. ports must be carried by ships built, owned and operated by Americans, while another Burns-Tollefson Amendment prohibits the construction of U.S. Navy ships by shipyards outside the United States, which severely limited the recovery of the U.S. Navy's warship manufacturing capabilities. At this time, Hanwha Ocean took action. They acquired Philadelphia Shipyard at the end of 2024, intentionally bypassing legal obstacles to build ships for the U.S. Navy.
Hanwha Marine announced a $5 billion infrastructure upgrade plan to increase the annual production of Philadelphia shipyard from less than two ships to 20 ships. In August this year, South Korean President Lee Jae-ming, who visited the United States, specially inspected the Philadelphia Shipyard and attended the naming ceremony of the U.S. National Security Multi-Mission Ship (NSMV)"Maine" built at the shipyard.
The U.S. Navy is sparing no effort to strengthen its ship-building capabilities. The Pentagon talks about "a large-scale conflict between China and the United States" all day long. Hanwha Ocean has actively helped the U.S. Navy build ships. What's more, at the 301 hearing held in the United States this year, Hanwha Ocean's top officials not only "strongly supported" various discriminatory measures against China, but even took the initiative to "make suggestions." Therefore, now China must take action against South Korea's sea, and it may be too late if it does not take action.
The United States is now in the military and industrial manufacturing reform is synchronized domestically and abroad, to use all available resources, including the entire Western world and the resources that Japan and South Korea can mobilize, to start a comprehensive arms race and strategic competition with China, in other words, China is now not only in the arms race and strategic competition with the United States, but with the entire Western world and South Korea to carry out the arms race and strategic competition - and, under the incitement and impulse of the United States, the other side is already hostile to China.
We must correctly recognize such a serious fact. If we still relish the fact that China's shipbuilding and shipbuilding production capacity overtook the United States by 230 times in the first half of 2025, and if we still relish the crushing blow of China's rare earth sanctions on the United States in the second half of 2025, we may miss some more important and objective information. For example, the United States has mobilized the entire West and all its allies to engage in a strategic competition with China. It can be said that the situation is very serious.
(The author is a special researcher at Kunlun Policy Research Institute; Source: Kunlun Policy Network [Authorized by the author], revised release; The picture is from the Internet, invaded and deleted)