I think it's mostly a version of the former. The US has a hammer (sanctions to restrict tech and capital intensive development) and they only know how to wing it at nails. The failure of US sanctions to truly hurt Russia is an example of this - it really does seem like they thought they'd do more, even though the "bring EU closer to the US" strat worked for now.

I'm sure there are wonks that have thought of contingencies around this anti-China strategy so that there are multiple ways to "win", but I think the core of it is to try to slow down China's growth and domination of tech, as the US (and EU vassals) rely heavily on their (self-) advantaged position in tech monopolies. The US and EU absolutely cannot compete so the US is trying to delay and to carve out more spaces to neocolonize (EU better be ready for that lol). EU countries are playing with the idea of being less vassalized but so far haven't done anything concrete.

One "win" will probably be that this slots into a general new cold war anti-China narrative. They're always slapping that "China bad" button so that the US populace will be amenable to having their consent manufactured for more. Notice that the US media narratives are, "I guess the sanctions didn't work against those threatening sneaky [slur]s, so how do we escalate even more?" and not, "why are there even sanctions and who wants them?" Getting ready to escalate and escalate, hoping that China will eventually react so strongly that there will be a watershdd moment.

The Amerikkkan political class only knows how to ramp up tensions until they have the excuses they need to do mass murder for profit.