As for the economics of warfare the prize will go to the country that can manage and mass produce the better technology...
Production and cost per worker varies per country.
The populations of countries like China @ 1.3 billion, then India @ 1.2 billion and then USA @ .3 billion may proportionately affect the number and quality of engineers and skilled labor to build the robots.
The availability of capital, quality of security, ingenuity and good leadership are always keys to military success.
For the USA to simply spend the most money does not guarantee anything.
No it doesn’t, but when better machines are better manufacturing employees in the technology race - wealth and technology is a curve that has little to do with population and more to do with education.
Despite our educational deficiencies, our culture still appears to create the most people who think outside the box. That is the American ideal and an innate advantage in our engineers, designers, and even our soldiers. We think for ourselves and we are not afraid to try something new. Those are concepts that are not always welcomed in our competitors. We are a uniquely inventive culture - unparalleled in history. God help us if that ever changes!
This is one of the main reasons why school choice is so important and top down edicts like common core are so corrosive. We have to get our children’s minds out of the happy meal box that progressive ideology has stuck them in - our very survival depends on it and it is one of the reasons I am a big proponent (and practitioner) of home schooling.