If you ever end up in a war with China, you'll be seeing plenty of drones. Obviously China doesn't use drones for killing terrorists - China doesn't kill terrorists because terrorists have no way to get into China in the first place.
Using this logic then US can do anything with the exception of the things you are 100% sure China(or insert other country here) is not and will not do it.
This means surveillance, killer robots, black magic,genetically enhanced humans, illegal experiments and procedures, is a valid tool for US because "what if we have a war with China, we must have same tools as them"
The question is: should America compete in the arms race? I don't know. But there are big consequences either way.
Say US wants to spend a lot of many with some black magic consultant that could assassinate at a distance, you can justify it by launching a rumor that China does it too or probably does it or it will do it.
So you throw away any moral discussions by blaming China , they do it so we have no choice.
However that aside, AI is very big in China right now, and they're using it for numerous applications with thousands of students going through Chinese universities being taught how to handle this stuff. While the same doesn't apply to niche interests like genetically enhanced humans (who is working on that, really?), something like AI with thousands of capable researchers and engineers is a different story.
People don't like war, so it is natural that some people won't want to use their talent for making weapons.