As Operation Roaring Lion, aka Epic Fury, grinds on into its second week, China is studying every battlefield innovation, every US decision, and every strategic ripple with extraordinary intensity.
According to Carice Witte, founder and executive director of the SIGNAL Group, and Amir Husain, a leading American technologist and serial entrepreneur, the conflict with Iran is reshaping global military balances in ways that will reverberate far beyond the region. Their assessments paint a stark picture: China is learning rapidly, the US is burning through critical stockpiles, and the future of warfare is being rewritten in real time.
Beijing is looking at the war as a live laboratory for understanding how the United States fights, how it escalates, and how it absorbs simultaneous crises.
Speaking to Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post, Witte emphasized that China’s interest in the war is deep and multifaceted.
Though the world is watching both Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine and those of Iran’s in the current conflict, “You cannot put Iran and Russia in the same bucket as China,” according to Witte. “The quality of their equipment is better than Iran’s or Russia’s. China is skilled, smart, and capable. They’ve improved their technology dramatically.”
Witte warned that China’s real weakness lies not in equipment, but in experience.
“This is not to say that the defense technology being used in this war is not of great interest to the Chinese military and the leadership, as well as tech companies. They will try to find out the details, understand what works, and try to acquire information to produce the equipment that they feel is most relevant. That all goes without saying.”
However, Witte added, “No Chinese fighter has ever seen real battle, much less the battle of the 21st century.”
China is absorbing real‑world lessons
While Beijing is certainly studying the defense technologies being deployed by the US and Israel, that hardware is only one part of the equation.
“They’re studying US and Israeli capabilities, but the tech isn’t their top concern,” Witte said. “What matters most to them are the strategic implications, and how to counter them in the long term.”
China’s defense industry, she noted, is highly capable and adept at absorbing lessons from others.
“They’re excellent at reverse‑engineering. They're not so good at going from zero to one, but know how to copy and improve on what they've copied with great skill,” she said.
Writing on X/Twitter, Husain noted, “This war demonstrated the actual, practical interplay of Chinese and Russian high-resolution orbital imagery and targeting assistance with cheap Iranian drones. And it has been remarkably effective.”
China, he said, will be able to apply these tactics with three major advantages: industrial scale, unified command of the kill chain, and far more sophisticated offensive systems.
US equipment no longer looks like the future
According to Husain’s analysis, cheap Iranian drones are destroying billion‑dollar systems. This raises uncomfortable questions for US partners, such as the Gulf countries who have stocked up on American platforms.
Several reports have placed the number of American Reaper drones downed over Iran at close to a dozen. Israel has also lost several Hermes 900 and Heron TP long-range drones since the war began. These two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are among Israel’s primary long-endurance reconnaissance and strike platforms, widely used for intelligence gathering, surveillance, and precision strike missions.
Radar systems and THAAD missile defense systems were also destroyed in American bases across the Gulf during the first week of the war. The expensive UAVs were not downed by air defense systems and the radars were not struck by ballistic missiles, but by cheap Iranian drones.
“The fact is that cheap Iranian drones blowing up $1.1B radars and THAAD subsystems on video cannot be ignored. Domestically-manufactured surface-to-air missiles shooting down $32M drones cannot be ignored. Neither can civilian trucks launching ballistic missiles produced en masse.”
”To many observers, US equipment comes across as ‘not the future’ in very distinct ways,” according to Husain. Therefore, he queries: “Is the ‘massively expensive, exquisite platform’ approach really the future?”
In addition, America has launched 2,000 precision munitions against over 3,000 targets in Iran, and allied countries have fired hundreds of interceptors against Iranian missiles and drones. “These will take a lot of money and a lot of time to replenish,” he noted, “And at the end of those years of replenishment, the US will stand exactly where it stood at the beginning of this war.
“Meanwhile, China would have accumulated years of additional offensive SoWs [stand-off weapons systems], missiles, and drones.”
Iran war is an AI training bonanza for China
The conflict with Iran has underscored the decisive role of cyber and electronic warfare (EW). The opening airstrikes against Iran were accompanied with intensive cyber and EW operations by the US and Israel
Throughout the war, both Israel and the US have been using cyberattacks to disrupt Iranian missile launch networks and electronic warfare to blind radars, jam communications, and divert drones. Israel has also hacked into Iran’s traffic system to track leadership prior to the decapitation of the country’s leadership, including Ali Khamenei. Multiple news websites and applications have also been hacked throughout the war.
Husain views the war with Iran as “ a dataset goldmine for China…This data isn’t just for human learning anymore… it will also be collected to build automated detection and threat classification models.”
China, he said, is collecting multi‑spectral imagery, electronic intelligence, and real‑time data on US platforms, including the F‑35, F‑22, and the new weapons, notably the stealth black Tomahawk missile.
And while Beijing has developed highly sophisticated offensive cyber capabilities, this war is accelerating China’s military AI development.
For Witte, though, while Chinese “technology will be formidable,” the real question is “whether their forces are trained to use it effectively, and there you have innumerable problems for the Chinese.
“How well are the Chinese exercises really preparing them for actual battle? We have to remember that no Chinese fighter has ever seen real battle, much less the battle of the 21st century. Another important question is, to what extent does the leadership believe that they are prepared for battle?”
Beijing’s view of Washington: Trump is a wildcard
Witte highlighted that “China hasn’t learned anything definitive, yet they’re watching every move extremely closely.”
But, she stressed, “China has a completely different worldview, different approach, and different priorities. So the questions we would ask of anyone else should be re‑examined when approaching a subject with respect to the Chinese.”
Witte noted that China’s leadership was struggling to predict US behavior under President Donald Trump. She told D&T that after the 12 Day War with Iran last year, Chinese analysts concluded that Trump would only use force when he could secure a quick, decisive victory. That assumption was shattered when the US continued military operations despite casualties.
“After the June war last year with Iran, they [the Chinese] said that he [Trump] would only act in a military framework when it would be a quick in-and-out win. This was reaffirmed with the capture of [Venezuelan dictator Nicolas] Maduro in January,” she said.
However, as a result of America continuing the war despite suffering casualties, Trump has come to be seen as a complete wildcard by China's leadership. Right now, they simply don’t know what Trump might do,” Witte told D&T.
Nevertheless, this uncertainty has not stopped Beijing from pursuing diplomatic engagement.
“Beijing vigorously protests the war and harshly criticizes the US for decapitating Iran's leadership and [for] how it is executing the war, yet remains anxious to host Trump in China," she told D&T.
“The leadership could easily cancel that invitation as a statement of protest. To the contrary, they are doing everything they can to make sure that the visit happens. They consider this the single most important diplomatic event of the year.”
Witte also warned that China was applying lessons from the Middle East to its own region.
“From Manila’s perspective, China attacks them multiple times a day through grey‑zone operations,” she said, adding that the US carries out freedom of navigation expeditions but hasn't meaningfully responded in the South China Sea to China's violations regarding EEZs belonging to countries in the region. This has resulted in China expanding its control in the area.”
A test of US bandwidth
Beijing is paying close attention to the performance of the US and its partners in a high-intensity, multi-domain conflict far from home. It is studying specific military capabilities, operational patterns, and technological solutions – and mapping them directly onto a Taiwan scenario.
Taken together, Witte and Husain’s assessments reveal that a profound shift is underway. China is watching, learning, and preparing.
Perhaps the most important takeaway for Beijing is that the US has managed a high‑intensity conflict in the Middle East while continuing to support Ukraine and maintain its Indo‑Pacific posture. The war is challenging China’s assumption that Washington cannot handle simultaneous crises.
But, Witte warned, “Never underestimate the Chinese; that’s the fastest way to lose a war.”
She argued that treating China like Russia or the Islamic Republic of Iran is a mistake. “One of the big mistakes by Israel is looking at China like they are Russia. But they are not similar. They are a very different animal, and everything about China is unique unto itself,” she said.
Meanwhile, the US is expending vast resources, exposing its systems to foreign intelligence, and raising doubts among allies about the future of American military dominance.
The war may be thousands of miles from Beijing, but its consequences are already reshaping the global balance of power.