Wouldn't an arms race be a good boost to the economy? Consider the negative economic ramifications, for the Chinese, of one. If we deploy a missile defense system on the West Coast capable of neutralizing Chinese ICBMs, even if it only has a success rate of, say, 20%, against Chinese ICBMs, that means the Chinese have to build the extra missiles and warheads to overcome our defense system. We force the Chinese to spend money on less-advanced missiles, we get a defense against North Korea, Iran, and Russia. Sounds like a good deal, and if we swing it right (i.e. oops! Los Alamos lost a report saying the defense system is capable of shooting down 95% of Chinese missiles. In reality our defense system gets less than that, but the Chinese think otherwise) we could get the Chinese to spend or concede far more than we concede.

However, like I asked above, again consider the economic ramifications. The Chinese finance a lot of our debt, inexpensively build a lot of the products we buy, finance our debt, and provide another rival for Russia. Did I mention how much of our debt they own? What if they Chinese stop buying it, or buy less of it? Chilton may be taking that into account.