‘Near indestructible warriors’: China unveils robotics quantum leap with kung fu demonstration

On some level, we all know deep down that one day we’re going to have to fight in a desperate war against the machines. We just didn’t expect it to come quite so soon. It’s no secret that robotics has been making very literal leaps and strides in the 2020s, accelerating from quadrapedal to bipedal robots that uncannily mimic human movement.

But, despite this, even the most advanced humanoid robots usually look more than a little unsteady on their feet: more Bambi on ice than Bruce Lee. Unfortunately, it looks like those days are over, as a stunning and quietly terrifying demonstration on Chinese television last night appears to show robots far beyond what we thought they could do:

This aired tonight to 1 billion people in China. A year ago these robots could barely wave a handkerchief, now they can do backflips and kung fu with nunchucks. Physical intelligence is the next frontier. pic.twitter.com/xFasDuGgRx

— Tristan (@Tristan0x) February 16, 2026

These robots are the product of Unitree Robotics, based in Hangzhou, China. These are their new G1 model, and they bill this performance as having “achieved the world’s first fully autonomous humanoid robot cluster Kung Fu performance”.

It should be underlined that I have no way of truly verifying what’s going on here. Firstly, the video doesn’t appear to be AI-generated or CGI-enhanced, whatever else is going on, these are real robots physically doing these motions. There is some question over whether this is a pre-recorded performance drawn from mocap data, but even if that’s the case, it’s still hugely impressive.

“War – and its consumption of life – has become a well-oiled machine.”

It’s also very easy to imagine these robots doing a lot more than Kung Fu tricks. After all, if they can run up a wall and flip backwards off it, what’s stopping them from being deployed to a battlefield to pursue people through urban environments?

Or, more prosaically, what’s stopping them from being assigned to any number of manual labor jobs that currently require human workers who need annoying things like wages, healthcare, time off, and so on?

The only real hurdle is their individual unit cost, and maybe battery life, but those are things that can and will be reduced and improved over the coming months. All of which means that, while impressive, this demonstration should send shivers up your spine. Automation has already come for countless jobs, and this is only going to turbocharge that process.

We can’t help but wonder what’ll happen to all the people who lose their jobs from these creations. How will they eat, pay rent, and provide for their families? More to the point, how do economies function if robots are doing all the jobs and people can’t afford to buy things? I guess one way or another, something will have to be done about this surplus of humanity…