Why Does the World Suddenly Want Us to See Its Power?
Research precursor for a future human-written article
Author’s note: This preliminary article was written by ChatGPT at the request of Ashley Greer as a research and conceptual precursor to an article she plans to write herself. It is intended to organize research, identify patterns, test connections, and develop questions for further reporting. It should not be considered Ashley Greer’s finished article or her final analysis.
On June 14, 2025, tanks rolled through Washington.
Thousands of soldiers participated in the Army’s 250th birthday celebration, accompanied by armored vehicles, helicopters, horses, parachutists, music, and fireworks. Washington had not seen a military parade of comparable scale in decades.
Taken alone, the parade could be understood as quintessential Donald Trump: monumental, theatrical, patriotic, and unapologetically interested in the visual expression of American strength.
But then the spectacles kept coming.
As the United States approached its 250th anniversary, the Washington Monument became a projection screen. The National Mall became the site of a national prayer gathering and then a sprawling Great American State Fair. Aircraft roared over Washington. Warships and tall ships gathered in New York Harbor. The White House lawn became the site of a UFC event complete with military flyovers, parachutists, motorcycles, and fireworks. Young Americans competed in the Patriot Games. The monumental core of Washington prepared to become the backdrop for an IndyCar race.
Individually, these events can be explained as entertainment, commemoration, sport, patriotism, or presidential showmanship.
Together, they suggest a question worth asking:
Why, at this particular moment, does power increasingly seem to need to be seen?
The Parade Is Only One Part of the Story
The most obvious interpretation of America’s recent embrace of spectacle is political.
Trump has always understood politics visually. Gold, towers, rallies, aircraft, flags, uniforms, enormous stages, sporting events, and monumental architecture are all part of a political vocabulary built around scale.
But focusing exclusively on Trump risks missing something considerably larger.
Because while America has been staging increasingly elaborate displays of national strength at home, military forces around the world have been conducting increasingly consequential demonstrations and rehearsals of power abroad.
And that trend crosses administrations.
From 2019 through 2026, the United States participated in a succession of enormous multinational exercises.
Talisman Sabre grew from roughly 34,000 participants in 2019 to more than 35,000 participants from 19 nations in 2025.
RIMPAC rebounded from its COVID-reduced 2020 iteration to exercises involving tens of thousands of personnel, dozens of ships, submarines, and more than a hundred aircraft.
NATO’s Steadfast Defender 2024 involved approximately 90,000 personnel—the alliance’s largest exercise in decades.
In 2025, the U.S. Air Force conducted Resolute Force Pacific, or REFORPAC, its largest contingency-response exercise ever conducted in the Indo-Pacific. More than 12,000 personnel and 400 U.S. and allied aircraft operated across more than 50 locations spread across roughly 3,000 miles.
The evidence does not support a simple argument that Trump returned to office and suddenly created an era of enormous American war games.
Many of the trends predate his second administration.
Something else is happening.
Europe Is Relearning How to Mobilize
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered many of the assumptions that shaped post-Cold War Europe.
The possibility of major conventional warfare on the continent ceased to be theoretical.
European countries are rebuilding ammunition production, strengthening air defenses, examining transportation infrastructure, increasing military spending, and reconsidering reserves and civil defense.
NATO exercises increasingly rehearse the practical mechanics of continental warfare: moving troops across borders, transporting armor, protecting infrastructure, supplying armies, reinforcing the alliance’s eastern flank, and coordinating enormous multinational forces.
Europe is not primarily performing strength for entertainment.
It is rebuilding the capacity to mobilize.
And increasingly, it wants Moscow to see that capacity.
Russia Makes History Into Strategy
Russia occupies a different category because it is already fighting a major war.
Its military spectacles therefore operate alongside actual combat.
Victory Day remains one of the most important pieces of political theater in the Russian state. Soldiers, missiles, armored vehicles, historical memory, and political leadership are assembled into a single narrative.
The message connects 1945 to the present.
Past sacrifice legitimizes present sacrifice. Historical victory becomes evidence of national endurance. Military power becomes inseparable from Russian identity.
The audience is simultaneously domestic and international.
Russia is communicating something relatively simple:
We can endure.
China Makes Capability Visible
China may offer the clearest example of spectacle functioning simultaneously as political theater and strategic communication.
Its enormous September 2025 military parade in Beijing included more than 10,000 troops, more than 100 aircraft, and hundreds of pieces of military equipment.
But the most interesting displays were not necessarily traditional tanks and soldiers.
China prominently displayed missiles, drones, unmanned systems, electronic warfare capabilities, aircraft, and technologies associated with a highly networked modern military.
That matters because much of contemporary military capability is otherwise invisible.
Software cannot march through Tiananmen Square.
An algorithm cannot salute Xi Jinping.
But the autonomous weapons and military systems those technologies enable can.
Meanwhile, Chinese exercises around Taiwan have become increasingly sophisticated and coercive. Recent exercises have rehearsed operations including the blockade of ports and the establishment of maritime and aerial superiority.
They increasingly resemble components of an actual Taiwan campaign.
That creates an unsettling ambiguity.
At what point does an exercise stop being an exercise?
Taiwan Is Preparing Society, Not Just Its Military
Taiwan has responded differently.
Its Han Kuang exercises increasingly incorporate civilian resilience alongside conventional military operations.
Hospitals, transportation networks, local governments, businesses, evacuation systems, communications, and supply distribution are becoming part of national defense exercises.
The objective is not simply to demonstrate that Taiwan can fight.
It is to demonstrate that Taiwanese society can continue functioning while fighting.
Taiwan’s 2026 planning has explicitly contemplated a progression from Chinese gray-zone harassment, to military exercises, to an exercise becoming an actual attack.
That possibility illustrates one of the most dangerous characteristics of contemporary military competition.
Preparation itself can begin to resemble aggression.
And aggression can potentially disguise itself as preparation.
The Security Dilemma Returns
This creates a classic security dilemma.
China conducts exercises because it believes it must demonstrate the ability to control Taiwan and deter outside intervention.
Taiwan observes those exercises and strengthens its defenses.
The United States and its allies observe China and conduct larger exercises across the Pacific.
China observes those exercises and concludes that American alliances are becoming more threatening.
The cycle repeats.
Europe contains a similar dynamic.
NATO sees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concludes that enormous exercises and greater military readiness are necessary.
Russia sees NATO expanding its capabilities and describes the alliance as an increasing threat.
That does not mean responsibility for these conflicts is equally distributed.
It means that once a security dilemma begins, military preparation can become self-reinforcing.
Then Comes Artificial Intelligence
AI changes this picture profoundly.
For most of military history, greater military capacity required greater quantities of something visible.
More soldiers.
More horses.
More ships.
More tanks.
More aircraft.
Twenty-first-century military power increasingly operates differently.
AI can potentially allow a smaller number of humans to coordinate far larger networks of machines.
Autonomous aircraft can accompany crewed fighters.
Drones can conduct reconnaissance, targeting, communications, logistics, and attack missions.
Artificial intelligence can process satellite imagery, identify patterns in enormous intelligence datasets, assist commanders, predict maintenance requirements, optimize logistics, and accelerate cyber operations.
The military may therefore become more capable without becoming proportionately larger in manpower.
American military personnel numbers illustrate the point.
The United States had roughly 1.335 million active-duty personnel in 2019. The authorized active force for 2026 remains around 1.3 million.
America is not experiencing anything resembling World War II-style mass mobilization.
Yet defense resources have risen enormously.
Where does the additional capacity go?
Increasingly, into expensive technological systems:
missiles, aircraft, submarines, satellites, drones, sensors, cyber capabilities, nuclear modernization, autonomous systems, communications networks, and software.
Military power is becoming increasingly capital-intensive.
And increasingly computational.
The New Arsenal Is Also a Data Center
This changes our understanding of national infrastructure.
The industrial foundations of military power once seemed relatively obvious.
Steel mills.
Shipyards.
Railroads.
Oil fields.
Aircraft factories.
Those things still matter.
But another layer has been added:
semiconductors, electricity, data centers, AI models, satellites, telecommunications networks, robotics, and advanced manufacturing.
AI makes data centers part of the infrastructure of national power.
And data centers require something profoundly physical.
Electricity.
Land.
Cooling.
Transmission lines.
Semiconductors.
Critical minerals.
Capital.
That means debates over nuclear power, electrical grids, natural gas, chip manufacturing, semiconductor export restrictions, and data-center construction are no longer merely technology or environmental debates.
Increasingly, they are questions of national capacity.
The strategic competition between the United States and China is therefore not simply a contest over who possesses the best AI model.
It is a competition over which system can assemble:
compute + energy + chips + talent + capital + manufacturing + military integration.
Taiwan's position at the center of advanced semiconductor manufacturing makes the intersection between technological and military competition even more consequential.
AI Also Makes War Faster
Artificial intelligence may create another problem.
Military decision-making has traditionally required humans to process enormous amounts of information.
Increasingly, machines can assist.
Imagine a future crisis around Taiwan.
Satellites detect unusual movements.
AI identifies military vehicles.
Signals intelligence detects changes in communications.
Algorithms correlate those signals with previous Chinese exercises.
A command system calculates that an attack may be imminent.
A commander receives a recommendation.
The entire process could occur far faster than it once did.
Speed can strengthen deterrence.
It can also shorten the amount of time available to determine whether something is actually happening.
If Taiwan fears that a Chinese exercise could suddenly become an invasion, it has incentives to mobilize earlier.
If China believes American surveillance systems can rapidly identify preparations for an attack, it has incentives to disrupt those systems earlier.
If the United States believes a blockade could be established quickly, it has incentives to disperse forces earlier.
Everyone becomes faster.
Everyone becomes more capable.
Everyone may also become more nervous.
The Paradox of Invisible Power
And this returns us to the spectacle.
Something paradoxical may be occurring.
Actual state power is becoming increasingly invisible at precisely the moment its public presentation is becoming increasingly theatrical.
Some of the most consequential American capabilities now reside inside places the public will never see:
server farms,
classified networks,
satellite constellations,
semiconductor fabrication plants,
algorithms,
software,
cyber infrastructure.
None of these produces the visceral reaction of a B-2 bomber flying overhead.
An algorithm cannot roar down Constitution Avenue.
A data center cannot sail into New York Harbor.
Artificial intelligence cannot parachute onto the National Mall.
Yet governments still need citizens, allies, and adversaries to understand that they possess power.
Perhaps that helps explain the renewed importance of physical spectacle.
China rolls missiles through Tiananmen Square.
Russia rolls armor across Red Square.
NATO moves tens of thousands of soldiers across Europe.
Taiwan rehearses evacuating cities.
America puts tanks on Constitution Avenue, fighters over Washington, warships in New York Harbor, mixed martial arts on the White House lawn, and race cars around its monuments.
These events are not equivalent.
Their political systems, strategic circumstances, and intentions are profoundly different.
But they share something.
They make capacity visible.
The Return of the Demonstrative State
For much of the post-Cold War era, Western political power was frequently communicated through relatively bloodless symbols:
summits,
trade agreements,
international institutions,
economic statistics,
communiqués,
policy speeches.
Power remained real, but its presentation became increasingly technocratic.
That period may be ending.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine demonstrated that industrial warfare had not disappeared.
China's rise returned great-power competition to the center of American strategy.
Taiwan demonstrated the strategic importance of semiconductor manufacturing.
COVID exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains.
Artificial intelligence made computing infrastructure a component of national power.
Energy once again became inseparable from national security.
And governments increasingly appear interested not merely in possessing capacity, but in demonstrating it.
Perhaps the state is becoming physical again.
Or perhaps something even stranger is occurring.
State power is simultaneously becoming more invisible and more theatrical.
Its real capabilities increasingly reside in algorithms, networks, chips, satellites, sensors, and autonomous machines.
Its public representation remains stubbornly physical:
soldiers,
fighters,
warships,
missiles,
athletes,
machines,
flags,
monuments.
China's message might be:
We can build.
Russia's:
We can endure.
Europe's:
We can mobilize.
Taiwan's:
We can survive.
And America's may increasingly be:
We can innovate, mobilize, and dominate technologically—and we can still put on the biggest show.
Which leaves a question worth investigating much further:
Why does the world suddenly want us to see its power?
Perhaps because some of the most consequential forms of twenty-first-century power are becoming increasingly difficult to see.
And governments still need power to be felt.
Research Status / AI Disclosure
This document was written by ChatGPT at the request of Ashley Greer as a research precursor and conceptual framework for a future article that Greer intends to research, report, and write herself. The organization, synthesis, comparisons, and prose in this document were generated by AI from an extended research discussion. It should not be represented as Greer’s human-authored article. Facts, statistics, quotations, dates, and causal claims should be independently verified against primary sources before publication.