Pentagon worried that U.S. trade war with China could lead to actual war (Source thinkprogress.org) pentagon report states: “Over the last three years, the PLA [China’s People’s Liberation Army] has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against U.S. and allied targets. The PLA may continue to extend its operations beyond the first island chain, demonstrating the capability to strike U.S. and allied forces and military bases in the western Pacific Ocean, including Guam.” If this sounds an awful lot like the threat the United States faced from North Korea, it’s because it is. As the Trump administration is engaged in some kind of agreement with North Korea , it has managed to increase tensions with China. The report also mentions China strengthening “its military space capabilities” at a time when President Trump’s “Space Force” idea for militarizing space is meeting with skepticism and pushback. The military-to-military relations between the United States and China have been tested, and the cracks started to show in May, when the Pentagon withdrew an invitation for China to participate in multinational naval exercises. All of this comes on top of recent reports that China is testing a hypersonic missile that could be developed to carry a nuclear warhead that can evade all current U.S. detecting systems and travel at up to six times the speed of sound (4,563 mph).