I think we both find that our views overlap.
In other words a large population can in fact provide the raw numbers from which human innovation and imagination can be drawn and applied to technology.
On the other hand, a large population can lurch out of control for a country like China and become a threat to the existence of the regime.
So a mass of fertile minds create the technology which controls the mass of fertile minds. This China has clearly done but the more the mass is controlled the less liberty and the less liberty, clearly, the less innovation.
A massive population can provide an ambitious country with a huge market with which to dictate terms of trade and even internal affairs such as Censoring media in a Hollywood desperate for that large market. Both the United States and China have dictated trade and internal affairs from this power position.
On the other hand the huge population generates more than a huge market, it generates huge demand which must be fed often from foreign sources leaving the nation vulnerable to supply interruptions. We have experienced that in the supply chain revelations coming out of covid-19 revealing our vulnerability up and down the line but especially with respect to antibiotics.
A huge population can be a Malthusian problem. United States is fortunate that it can feed a huge population and much of the rest of the world besides. China is not so fortunate and its huge population has become a huge problem to feed. That means that resources have to be diverted from technology to sustenance. It means further that trade compromises have to be negotiated blunting the power of the large market to dominate neighbors.
It is not necessarily true that a large population base is necessary because it does not take too many great brains to provide the technology. The best evidence of that is the state of Israel. One might also point to postwar Japan and Germany as examples of nations who know how to bend their national resources toward innovating technology. The question is, do anyone actually need 1.4 billion people to dream up the technology needed in the 21st and 22nd century?
A great massive population can be a great liability in a world of ICBM missiles carrying nuclear warheads because it amounts to a massive target. The age of mass armies that we saw on the first two world wars is clearly behind us but the need to care for huge population against privations in time of war remains with us.
Clearly there is a give-and-take in considering the military and geopolitical power granted to a nation with a large population. Anyone who denies some of the benefits has no sense of history, anyone who puts all his bets on it has no sense of the future.
