In a closed-door Capitol Hill flex session, players such as Tesla, Boston Dynamics, and Agility Robotics demanded a national robotics strategy and a dedicated federal office before Beijing’s dancing robots twirl circles around them.

Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas said that America had the first industrial robot in 1961, courtesy of General Motors, then fumbled the lead to Japan and Europe. Now, with artificial intelligence breathing new life into robot development, it’s anybody’s game—unless the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street and Washington keep staring at their phones while China flings $138 billion at state-backed robot R&D.

Elon [Roman Salute] Musk’s people were there too, pushing its comedy robot Optimus.

Tesla engineer Johnathan Chen asked lawmakers: “You create the robots, the question is, who’s going to scale them?”

The Association for Advancing Automation didn’t mince words either: a lack of a national plan means losing both the robotics and AI races. Their pitch includes tax perks, federal research funding, and workforce training—plus a central robotics HQ to steer the whole thing.

Meanwhile, China’s Unitree robots are already line dancing on national TV, hyped as symbols of high-tech patriotism. And no, Boston Dynamics isn’t impressed—its own robot menagerie only got off the ground thanks to Pentagon dollars.

Gartner analyst Bill Ray dismissed humanoids as “silly,” preferring “polyfunctional robots” that move boxes instead of doing TikTok routines. But even he agrees in this geopolitical tech showdown, nobody’s swapping bots across borders anytime soon.

“In the political climate at the moment, we’re not expecting to see fleets of Chinese robots working in American factories or fleets of American robots working in Chinese factories. I think that’s a given,” he said.