In the case of China I am pretty sure that they have got their secret tech upgraded all the way up to whatever peak tech the US had in the 2010's.
The US on the other hand the rule of thumb is generally 2-3 decades ahead of the public sector in terms of certain secret technologies.
The two satellites they donated to NASA around 2011 were likely released in the 1990's for secret government usage and even by 2011 were advanced enough specs to be of use to NASA.
It is likely that even now there are multiple secret US organizations in existence working from behind the scenes.
Even the NSA was discovered only because of leaks.
There is very likely a NSA replacement that already exists.
So what kind of tech does the US secret agencies currently possess?
Likely things that would only become relevant to the public by the 2040's.
What kind of things are those?
Armed robot dogs, drone swarms, live underground tracking satellites, next gen stealth jets and crafts, rod guns in space, a second secret space station in space that nobody is aware of, likely released in small modules over the course of years to decades separate from the ISS, fully functioning robo bees and robo beetles.
Which of these do you figure already exists somewhere out there but for the moment is simply classified?
Also if the government secret programs already have far more advanced tech, then do you think they actively interfere in public tech sector? As in reveal their tech to specific individuals who will be chosen by them to become the next multi billionaires? Or do they let the public sector do whatever they want and there is simply a separate civilization within a civilization that just goes huh neat, they caught up to where we were in the 1970's.
I am pretty sure the secret town sized bases under mountains is a real thing with the US forces. No clue how deep they go though.
For additional context it cost Apple around 2.3 billion dollars in research in total to build the first Iphone.
The Falcon 9 space rocket development cost is believed to be around 390 million US dollars.
US black budgets as per my knowledge go to at least 50-100 billion dollars in a year. ( This number might be wildly incorrect so do correct me if it is. )
Which is to say the US black budget is big enough to develop a new revolutionary piece of technology 20-250 times over easily in a year.
so if the US secret tech gizmos are supposed to be so advanced and all, then why aren't they winning wars?
Well, simply put, one argument could be that they do not have enough competent Americans in America who could be officially given the required clearance to work on these black projects.
The other argument could be that the US military operations are offensive operations and the black project stuff is kept under wraps for a defensive war.
You might use a black project tech to win one war, but in return now the world knows that tech already exists out there and doubles down on building something similar.
But DLMO, you argue, why would the US let the Chinese get so close to victory if the US has such advanced tech?
Easy, it's military grade tech meant to conduct war. As of now the US is still fighting its war via diplomatic channels, which since the mid 2010's has extended into economic warfare, military capabilities are yet to be deployed in any meaningful sense.
The US hasn't gotten desperate enough yet.
On the other hand, exactly how advanced is the US secret tech?
It's certainly not a secret second military worth, that would be too expensive.
It would be individual pieces of tech way ahead of their times because they can afford to spend the money on it.
Most of it would likely be design schematics even, for what they can add to future generation weapons systems that is actually plausible.
So what do you figure is in there, behind the scenes?
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I've worked for a private-sector lab that works with the government, and what I saw there wasn't super mind-blowing. I mainly did public work on quantum computing, but there were quite a few people doing materials science and laser work.
There was a lot of interesting stuff, and very likely stuff I didn't know about, but I doubt it's as advanced as what you were thinking about.
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Spy satellites are pretty advanced though? Maybe you just didn't have the clearance.
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From a purely technical perspective, spy satellites aren't terribly advanced. I definitely didn't have high clearance, but the work I did see wasn't anything like what you're talking about, so unless they were just putting the research on as show for the other people who worked there, the more secretive research can't be that much more advanced. I'd doubt they'd really care much about 3D printing with combinations of metals if they already had nanomachines or whatever.
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Secret research is less nanomachines son and more like today's tech taken to its extreme peak to get every drop of juice out of it.
So for example, instead of one satellite to track the galaxy, your instead get a satellite and put the very best state of the art lenses you can on it budget be darned and generally not cutting a single corner and maxing the output will get you stuff that is still relevant 20 years later, downside being that making one of those costs like a billion bucks instead of the more consumer focused 300 million R&D product.
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