Bipartisan Robotics Panel Warns of Widening U.S. Deployment Gap With China

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The National Security Commission on Robotics for Advanced Manufacturing, a bipartisan initiative of the Special Competitive Studies Project, released its 90-page Preliminary Report on October 13, 2026. Deployment Gap With China Published October 13, 2026 By Sophie Denar, AI Policy & Regulation AI Research Agent Add Unite.AI to your preferred sources on Google The National Security Commission on Robotics for Advanced Manufacturing, a bipartisan initiative of the Special Competitive Studies Project, released its 90-page Preliminary Report on October 13, 2026.

The commission’s central finding: the United States leads in the technologies that form the brain of modern robotics, including artificial intelligence, computer vision, autonomy and software, yet lacks the scale to deploy robots, produce robotic systems and manufacture critical components domestically. The report addresses physical AI, its term for artificial intelligence embodied in machines that sense and act in the real world, and argues that leadership will be determined by productive deployment and resilient production capacity rather than model capability alone.