The message from Beijing: mass, machines, and math

On Sept. 3, 2025, Beijing rolled out an 80th-anniversary Victory Day parade that wasn’t nostalgia—it was a forecast. Under a sky full of contrails and camera drones, China showed leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un exactly how it intends to fight: at scale, across domains, and with algorithms riding shotgun. The guest list alone told the story, but the hardware on Chang’an Avenue did the real talking.

What showed up: from nuclear triad to drone swarms

As reported by Reuters and others, China publicly paraded all three legs of a nuclear triad for the first time—air-launched Jinglei-1 , sea-based JL-3 , and land-based DF-61/DF-31/DF-5C —alongside a cabinet full of anti-ship and land-attack missiles, including

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