I find this recent video of what took place at the “2026 Spring Festival Gala” in China quite fascinating…
Apparently, this is all real and not CGI.
In which case, does anyone doubt that the Chinese are already building vast armies of these incredibly agile robots (heavily armed and fortified, of course) to take on any foolish nation (such as America, for example) who would dare to put boots on the ground in their homeland?
Yes I seriously doubt that, and I’ll tell you why:
Those robots are not autonomous. What they have is autonomous balance correction and spatial reorientation. They will have proximity alert which keeps them apart from each other adequately. Everything else you are watching, however, is a routine, which will have taken a large team of highly skilled engineers many months to prepare, with much constant tweaking and correction. They will be choreographed during performance via WiFi signals, the whole ensemble part of a common communications network. Most of the processing power of those robots is concentrating on the impressive looking part - the movement, balance and the orientation, otherwise they are literally dumb as rocks.
I doubt they have the ability to process natural human language in any way whatsoever, but if they did, you would find out just how useless they are for everyday general tasks. Sure, it can (when programmed as such) wield a sword and perform a realistic looking dance, but ask it to go backstage to the side-kitchen and make you a coffee.. that task is a thousand times more complex, because it requires true autonomy and full environmental processing and understanding. They just can’t do those things yet, and many think it’s a long way off. And if you did train one to do that, then it’s easy to mess it up again, just move the robot to a different location with a different kitchen and environment and it’s literally all back to square one..
The technology is constantly shifting. To build an army of these things for homeland protection or whatever would be an incredible waste of money and resources, because they would become obsolete in less than a year. A lot is getting poured into development, that much is obvious, but everything you see is just some transitional stage in development, never the end-game. No one is going to bet millions or billions on a horse with such a potentially short practical lifespan..
And this is where Americans go wrong, you are expecting the Chinese to do exactly what America would do, and they rarely do.. Whenever some powerful new technology emerges, the first thing that America considers, is: “How can it be used for military applications?”. That has become so ingrained in American culture, that it’s not only the Government who make it the first consideration, it’s the regular citizens too. What makes you assume that there has to be a darker greater agenda with all this on the Chinese side? Maybe they are doing all of this development to somehow improve their society, not just for the Generals, but for everybody? But in my experience, it’s almost impossible for most Americans to see things from that perspective, they are far too paranoid and untrusting; not faults of their own, they have simply been indoctrinated to think like that from an early age. Please don’t take that personally, it’s certainly not meant as such.
That’s my take on it.
—edit: In short, what you witnessed was the illusion of a troupe of robots performing a human-like display of agility and coordination. What was done to achieve this, however, bears no resemblance whatsoever to how a human would learn and perform the same routine. Humans could have learned it perfectly in a week, without precise 3D coordinates expressed with 10 decimal places, this would have taken much longer, and required all sorts of technical boffins and cheating to make it happen.. The real genius in the performance is the boys who are dancing with the robots. They would have to have been fully briefed on the limitations of the units and what can go wrong and how to avoid it. Much more than a dance routine was learned there by those young fellas I’ll bet..
Yeah, China is way ahead of the west when it comes to robotics. And they are working hard to catch up in AI too. DeepSeek is Chinese made and is far superior in cost efficiency to western models.
I am sure China has armies of weaponized robots ready to go, and are continuously improving and upgrading those robot armies all the time. Imagine once they combine the robots with superior AI… and then what happens when ASI takes over.
I think they are far ahead in practical application. They view things in a different way to westerners, they want to know how the technology can be applied right now, in its current form. I bet they’re not dreaming much about possible futures, they are instead focusing on the possible now. New features satisfy needs, not wants. They have taken the lead, and they now firmly have it. I doubt the west can catch up, because the entire ethos behind everything is flawed with us, but you already know that, of course.
That’s very Terminator of you, so I have to ask.. why? Why would they create such an army? What is the purpose? In what scenario would it be used on a modern battlefield? And as far as exterminating humans goes, a single strain of bacterium or virus is a lot easier..
China has their eye on destroying America. This has been a goal of theirs for a long time, ever since it became apparent America is an existential threat to China (let alone also to the rest of humanity).
Then they are going about it in a very strange way. It seems to me that China wants to co-exist with America, it just doesn’t want to put up with aggressive nonsense, which America is pretty good at, you have to admit. How would China benefit from “destroying” America? Do you think that China is working towards global domination? I just don’t feel that way, and looking at it through the lens of history, it’s a bit uncharacteristic, this is about as bad as it ever got:
Historical Influence : From the Tang (618–907) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties, China was a dominant force in East and Central Asia, with vast cultural, economic, and diplomatic reach. The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) , under Kublai Khan, extended Chinese-influenced rule across much of Eurasia, though not as a unified global empire.
I think you are expecting the Chinese to think like Americans, and mate, they don’t, they want to make stuff and sell it. It’s what they love to do.. They can design a fantastic manufacturing process for literally anything.
People diss them too much.
No problem, Niall, you make some valid points, and I appreciate and value your opinion.
However, just to be clear, I was thinking more in terms of the inherent potential in this robotic technology - assuming that it could eventually be combined with the ever-advancing field of AI processing.
I asked Google’s AI Overview the following question…
Me:
Is the most advanced version of ChatGPT capable of autonomous reasoning?
AI Overview:
Yes, the most advanced versions of ChatGPT—specifically the GPT-5/o-series models—are capable of advanced, autonomous reasoning and agentic tasks. These models can chain steps, plan actions, use tools like web searching and Python code execution, and self-correct, acting as autonomous assistants rather than just content generators.
The point is that it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to deduce that if each of those, again, surprisingly agile robots could somehow be loaded with their own individual allotment of ChatGPT (or whatever) style of autonomous reasoning capabilities (software), then it is not inconceivable that they could be turned into an army of fierce ground troops (and yes, I’ve probably seen too many evil robot movies such as The Terminator, for example 
).
Furthermore, as far as cost goes, in some cases (according to AI Overview), just one (expendable/one-time use) non-nuclear cruise missile called the “BrahMos” (created by a joint effort between India and Russia) can cost up to 4 million dollars.
And China has a one-time use (one target) missile called the “Guam Killer” that can cost up to 20 million dollars.
So, I don’t think that the Chinese would be concerned about wasteful spending if these robots can be turned into useful (albeit, expendable) weapons.
After all, it wouldn’t be the first time they put a lot of effort into ridiculously wasteful projects…
Anyway, again, you make some valid points, and I appreciate you setting me straight about what was actually taking place in that Chinese gala show…
…(perhaps we are witnessing the precursor to “Skynet”? 
).
China thinks long term, in centuries. Americans thinks about tomorrow, maybe the day after.
If you look into Chinese government ideology you will find they view their own race and culture as superior to all others. But they do not advertise this, they do not act in aggression. Do they have a geopolitical right to claim Taiwan by force? Yes they do. Yet they don’t, why not? Because they play the long game. They know the west is finished by its own errors. So they simply sit patiently, collecting industrial manufacturing power and hoarding gold and silver. Building up arms and robotic deathsquads and alliances with BRICS and many other nations who wait looking forward to the death of America.
China has been around for 3000 years or more. America has been here for… 250? 
This isn’t difficult.
This is a valid point, but with the technology the way it currently is, for the robot to be loaded with a general-purpose AI for full decision making would give it a terrible battery life for a start, also it’s a bit wasteful.. A more practical solution would be a “command and control” AI that the robots are networked to, but the comms would have to be wireless, and that introduces latency (and the possibility of errors), which slows everything down. Also the robot would have to send a lot of data itself, all the boots on the ground spatial awareness stuff, position in 3D space, detected objects, boundaries and potential obstacles, all in real time and with a high polling rate. It’s literally amazing how much information us humans efficiently process just by going to the kitchen, never mind making a coffee.
Ah, but that was an individual vanity project, I don’t think that is what is currently going on..
I hope not, that would be a sad indictment to the stupidity of humanity, I mean, they even made a movie that warned us about it, and then we go and do it anyway? But who knows, we are a very “special” species..
And good grief, the beautiful people of China have been clothing us and providing us with useful and inexpensive wares for decades, yet we have idiots in America that see them as our enemy.
It is utterly ridiculous that the modern world exists in such a divisive state…
”…We’re all in this together…”
…my “High School Musical” moment. 
Which is only sensible, under the circumstances.
There’s not really much evidence for the robotic deathsquads, beyond that they’re good at making robots. Their defense spending last year was $246B according to them, but estimates go as high as $567B, who knows who’s telling the truth there.. Still, they have 4x the US population, and less than half of its defence budget, they might be in second place, but it’s a distant second.
edit—AI laziness:
China’s defense spending per capita in 2025 is estimated at approximately $177 based on the official 2025 defense budget of 1.78 trillion yuan ($249 billion) and China’s population of about 1.43 billion.
This figure is significantly lower than that of major military powers:
- The United States: ~$3,000 per capita.
- Japan: ~$420 per capita.
- South Korea: ~$370 per capita.
Oh, now it’s $249 billion instead of 246, make up your mind AI..
Lol yeah, AI makes those little mistakes. I asked Google AI search the exact same question about a math calculation and it gave me two completely different answers each time.
China has some advantages over the US in terms of military and economy, then again it has weaknesses too. Of course I do not see China or the Chinese people as my enemy. I see the US government as not only my enemy but the enemy of the entire world. That being said, I would prefer not to be around when the rest of the world decides the US needs to go.. it’s not unreasonable the world will blame the American people for the actions of its insane government, since the American people did nothing to stop it.
My favorite portion of these robotic videos is where they arm them with machine guns, but remember folks, they would never use them against the civilian population, right?
