What are Russia's gains from the Iran war? 'We are not losers; we are winners' The world's militaries spent $2.88 trillion in 2025, an increase of 2.9 percent from the year before, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) latest report. To put that number into perspective, $2.88 trillion amounts to $350 of military spending for each person on the planet. In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks the rise of global militarisation, including how much each nation spends, which countries sell the most weapons, and how military spending compares with spending on healthcare and education. In 2025, the five biggest military spenders were the United States ($954bn), China ($336bn), Russia ($190bn), Germany ($114bn) and India ($92bn), accounting for more than half (58 percent) of world military spending. The US is by far the biggest spender, as it has been every year since World War II.

The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes a heavy focus on the continued development of artificial intelligence for the military, an investment that could be pivotal in the continued competition with China. "I think there are two key areas of the NDAA that point to a great strategic direction for the United States. The first is recognizing the threat China poses in both the physical and the cognitive domain of conflict, in the cold war we are currently in with them and the hot war they may consider in the future. AI, and protecting AI is a crucial part of that strategic calculus," Christopher Alexander, the chief analytics officer of Pioneer Development Group, told Fox News Digital. Alexander's comments come after President Biden signed the Pentagon spending bill into law last month, the yearly "must pass" legislation that lays out U.S. military spending.