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July 23, 2025

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AI arms race: US and China weaponize drones, code and biotech for the next great war

Politics 5 Mins Read

From drone swarms to gene-edited soldiers, the United States and China are racing to integrate artificial intelligence into nearly every facet of their war machines — and a potential conflict over Taiwan may be the world’s first real test of who holds the technological edge.

For millennia, victory in war was determined by manpower, firepower and the grit of battlefield commanders. However, in this ongoing technological revolution, algorithms and autonomy may matter more than conventional arms. 

‘War will come down to who has the best AI,’ said Arnie Bellini, a tech entrepreneur and defense investor, in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

U.S. planners now consider Taiwan the likely locus of a 21st-century great power conflict. Though America doesn’t formally ally with Taiwan, it has steadily armed the island and shifted its forces to focus on the Indo-Pacific. 

The Pentagon is responding with urgency, and nowhere is that transformation more visible than in the U.S. Army’s sweeping AI overhaul. 

The Army goes all-in: $36 billion AI investment

Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, the Army has launched a $36 billion modernization initiative aimed directly at countering China in the Indo-Pacific.

By 2026, each of its 10 active combat divisions will be equipped with roughly 1,000 drones, dramatically shifting the battlefield from crewed helicopters to autonomous systems.

Army leaders highlight that legacy weapons and bureaucratic lag are incompatible with future warfare. The new push includes AI-assisted command-and-control, real-world testing under challenging conditions in places like the Philippines and a rapid feedback model to keep doctrine updated.

Stopping wars before they start: Cyber + AI fusion

Beyond hardware, AI may prove most powerful in prevention. Bellini believes U.S. cyber espionage, combined with AI, could strike preemptively. ‘The United States is the very best at cyber espionage and cyber warfare… once you combine [that] with AI, you can stop a war before it even happens.’

This could involve infiltrating Chinese naval systems via cyber-AI tools and neutralizing threats before ships ever set sail.

Biotech on the battlefield: From medics to gene editing

AI isn’t just about machines — it’s changing biology too. The U.S. military is exploring AI-driven trauma care, synthetic blood and regenerative medicine to save lives.

However, China may be pushing the envelope further. ‘China has been one of the more forward-leaning countries in using biotech within its military,’ defense strategist Jack Burnham said. ‘In military hospitals, there is significant research on gene editing … some of this might be dual-use.’

Reports from intelligence chiefs and former DNI John Ratcliffe suggest China may be experimenting with gene-edited soldiers, raising alarms about the ethical gray zone of AI-biotech integration.

Will robots fight battles?

‘The future of warfare is not going to be with people,’ Bellini predicted. ‘It’s going to be robots. It’s going to be drones. And it’s the synchronization.’

Tesla is developing its ‘Optimus’ robot, he noted, complete with an AI-optimized ‘brain’ to complete chores that are ‘dangerous, repetitive and boring’ in warehouses, homes and even hazardous facilities like nuclear plants.

CEO Elon Musk has spoken out against using Optimus as a ‘killer robot,’ but still, foreign adversaries worry about the potential for dual use. 

China has imposed export restrictions on the rare-earth magnets needed for Optimus actuators, specifically requesting assurances that the units won’t be used for military purposes.

War-gaming for tomorrow’s conflict

U.S. forces are already simulating this future in AI-enhanced war games. Through these exercises, commanders learn to operate at AI pace — modeling logistics, battlefield flows, and adversaries at an unprecedented scale.

‘AI is really good at modeling logistics… visualizing and integrating vast quantities of data… [creating] a more immersive experience at a much larger scale,’ Burnham said.

‘These AI opponents are like intelligent enemies you’re playing against in a war game,’ explained Dr. Randall Hill, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. ‘It’s important to train not just with AI but also about AI — so soldiers understand where to trust it and where its limits are.’

Hill’s team is developing tools like PAL3, a personalized AI teaching assistant for military trainees that adapts to individual learning speeds. ‘It’s about helping both humans and machines understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses,’ he said.

Ethical concerns: Who keeps a human in the loop?

The U.S. insists on a ‘human-in-the-loop’ for lethal AI decisions — but China may not, experts warn.

‘Here in the U.S., we are focused on ethical and legal decisions on the battlefield… our adversaries… might not be as worried about keeping a human in the loop,’ said RJ Blake, a former defense official.

Hill echoed this concern, emphasizing the need for AI systems to be interpretable and stress-tested rigorously.

‘We need protocols aligned with American values,’ he said. ‘The AI must be explainable and capable of justifying its conclusions — and humans must recognize when those systems are outside their trained boundaries.’

A new era of warfare

As AI redefines warfare — from cyber and command systems to autonomous weapons and biotech — it’s not just a war machine being built. It’s a system of systems, blending digital, physical and biological domains.

Should Beijing move against Taiwan, the battlefield may no longer be measured in tanks or missiles — but in algorithms, networks and gene sequences.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

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Business

Orange juice importer says Brazil tariffs will squeeze American consumers

Business 4 Mins Read

Orange juice prices could rise by 20% to 25%, according to Johanna Foods, a small U.S. business suing the White House over tariffs threatened against Brazil.

President Donald Trump said in a July 9 letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that he would apply a 50% tariff to all imports from Brazil starting Aug. 1.

Trump said the high tariff rate was necessary because of ‘the way Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro.’

Prosecutors in Brazil have alleged that Bolsonaro was part of a scheme that included a plan to assassinate the country’s current president, who defeated him in the last election, and Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing.

Trump also said Brazil was censoring U.S.-based social media platforms and was running “unsustainable Trade Deficits” with the United States.

However, the United States has a goods trade surplus with Brazil — more than $7 billion last year, according to data from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Johanna Foods, which says it supplies nearly 75% of all private label “not from concentrate” orange juice to customers in the U.S., says those arguments do not constitute an economic emergency and therefore the president does not have the power to levy this tariff.

“The Brazil Letter does not refer to any legal or statutory authority under which the Brazil Tariff can be imposed by the President,” the company’s attorney Marc Kaplin writes in a filing.

“The Brazil Letter does not constitute a proper executive action, is not an Executive Order, does not reference or incorporate any Executive Orders or modify or amend any existing Executive Order,” the attorney continued.

The company said some of its customers include Walmart, Aldi, Wegman’s, Safeway and Albertsons.

Johanna Foods CEO Robert Facchina said the duty would result in an estimated $68 million hit, exceeding any single year of profits since the company was created in 1995.

“The Brazil Tariff will result in a significant, and perhaps prohibitive, price increase in a staple American breakfast food,” the lawsuit reads.

“The not from concentrate orange juice ingredients imported from Brazil are not reasonably available from any supplier in the United States in sufficient quantity or quality to meet the Plaintiffs’ production needs.”

Orange juice prices have already been rising across the country. Over the last year, the average price of a 16-ounce container rose 23 cents, or more than 5%, to $4.49, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Orange juice futures, the global benchmark that tracks the commodity, have also jumped recently. During the last month, they are up nearly 40%, with most of that increase coming on the heels of Trump’s threat.

Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled last month that social media companies can be held accountable for the content posted on their platforms. Elon Musk’s social media site, X, was also briefly banned last year in Brazil after Musk refused to comply with a court request to ban some accounts.

Facchina says layoffs of union manufacturing employees, administrative staff and a reduced production capacity at the company’s Flemington, New Jersey, and Spokane, Washington, facilities are near-certain should these tariffs go into effect. Johanna Foods employs almost 700 people across Washington state and New Jersey.

Brazil was the 18th-largest source of U.S. goods imports last year, with more than $42 billion worth of imports entering the country, according to U.S. International Trade Commission data.

In its legal filing, the company asks the Court of International Trade to declare that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not grant Trump the statutory authority to impose the tariffs against Brazil, and that the president has not identified a national emergency or “unusual and extraordinary threat” as required by the IEEPA law to impose the tariffs.

In response to the lawsuit, a White House spokesperson said the administration is ‘legally and fairly using tariff powers that have been granted to the executive branch by the Constitution and Congress to level the playing field for American workers and safeguard our national security.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

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