The US did lose an entire generation of equipment design cycle because of GWOT spending and GWOT-specific equipment procurement. For example, think of the Zumwalt and LCS. Even if these programs were not failures they would still be wasted resources and time. They were born out of USN's desire to insert itself into counter-insurgency (read: occupation) wars, which is an egregious idea on its own. The F-35, regardless of how capable it is, is a result of very dubious concepts (realize how 6th gen concepts are the opposite of what the F-35 is) and a horribly managed program too.
What US media doesn't want to mention is there is no return from that mistake. The decade of danger conveniently assumes they can make up for 16 years of wrong policy just because they realized the problem. It rests on the assumption that they can re-establish the technological lead and ramp up numbers faster than the PLA after 2030. I don't see why that should happen. The current situation was contributed heavily by the US being distracted but that doesn't mean it is temporary.
Let's suppose the GWOT didn't happen and that US military procurement continued on a trajectory where China was seen as the primary future threat.
Over the past 20 years, this would only have slowed the rate that the military balance moved in China's favour, not stopped it.
And arguably it would make little difference to the overall outcome in 2030, where China will likely have outright air superiority over the entire First Island Chain including all of Japan.
All those additional US submarines, carriers, bombers, NGADs and missiles would still be small in number compared to the Chinese military in 2030 and would still have to operate from a few distant, vulnerable island bases.
This assumes that past Chinese military development remains the same, where the strategic environment was seen as benign until 2017 with the election of Trump. Then we saw the start of aggressive anti-China rhetoric and policies, and the end of US strategic reassurance towards China. In retrospect, we can see this is when the Chinese military buildup kicked into high gear.
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In the absence of the GWOT and China being treated as the main threat to the USA, then arguably China's military buildup would have been triggered prior to 2017. So we would be looking at Chinese military superiority even sooner.
For example, suppose Chinese carrier development actually started 10 years earlier. So by 2020, China might already have 4-5 carriers and the first nuclear CATOBAR carrier.
And in an alternative 2020-2025 Chinese naval shipbuilding plan, China might already be building 4 carriers.
So perhaps it was a good thing for the USA (and its military advantage) - that they didn't focus on China until 2017.
