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Our efforts to help restore the technological prowess of the U.S. military started six years ago in a Pentagon conference room. One of us, a former executive and tech innovator in Silicon Valley, was then serving as the head of the Defense Innovation Board, created to match the needs of the Department of Defense with America’s most advanced technologies. The other was the deputy secretary of defense, reworking the U.S. military’s strategy for the growing competition among the world’s great powers. Though we’d never met before, we quickly realized we had reached the same conclusion: In failing to adapt to the changing character of warfare and great-power competition, America risked setting itself up for a catastrophic defeat.

Our subsequent work together, including at the Special Competitive Studies Project, has confirmed our initial fears. Thanks to a new generation of disruptive technologies and intensifying global rivalries, the likelihood of war between the world’s great powers—and the devastation such a war could wreak—will increase significantly this decade. The best way to deter such a war is for the U.S. military to restore its technological superiority over potential adversaries. We’ve spent the past year designing a strategy that we believe will enable us to do just that. Our window of opportunity is quickly closing.

Most Americans alive today have known only a world in which the U.S. military is dominant. For generations, it has been capable of both protecting our homeland against invasion and underwriting an international order that has fostered peace and prosperity on a scale that humanity had never previously experienced.

Our military primacy allowed us to shape the global economy—unlocking trillions of dollars for U.S. companies and citizens—and secure the free flow of commerce that enabled supply chains to function and globalization to flourish. It also allowed us to establish the global data network that powers the digital economy and international communication. Most important, our hegemony has helped protect democracy worldwide against challenges from authoritarianism.

Losing our military edge could threaten these gains and trigger irreversible consequences. The rival best positioned to overtake us is the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Its military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has closely studied the American way of war for the past three decades and invested in new capabilities specifically designed to defeat us. As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, recently warned Congress, the PRC is “working every day to close the technology gap with the United States and our allies.” Milley’s predecessor General Joe Dunford issued a similar warning in 2017: The U.S. military’s technological edge against China is eroding. Just weeks ago, the Biden administration noted in its National Security Strategy that China is gaining the capacity “to reshape the international order” and tilt “the global playing field to its benefit.”

Since our first meeting at the Pentagon, the character of conflict has changed dramatically. In 2016, North Korean hackers nearly succeeded in stealing all $1 billion that Bangladesh held at that time in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. In 2020, Azerbaijani forces used advanced Turkish-made drones to destroy Armenian tanks, overturning a decades-long stalemate in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, and demonstrating the limits of relying on armored vehicles in the 21st century. In 2021, a drone seems to have autonomously attacked fighters for the first time. And this year, Ukrainian armed forces and civilians used internet service provided by the U.S.-based Starlink and a secure messaging app developed in Switzerland to report on Russian military movements.

These changes are just the beginning. As emerging technologies mature, particularly artificial intelligence, and as the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China intensifies, changes in warfare will only accelerate. The next great-power war—should we be so unfortunate as to experience one—will be unlike any in history.

One key change is that militaries will have great difficulty hiding from or surprising one another. Sensors will be ubiquitous, and once-impenetrable intelligence will be vulnerable to quantum advances in decryption. Highly adaptable and mobile weapons systems—including drones, loitering munitions, and hypersonic missiles—will largely inhibit militaries from amassing forces to invade (though these systems may also enable surprise attacks of their own).