China in Race to Overtake U.S. Military in AI Warfare (2018) (nationalinterest.org)

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s recent meeting with senior PLA scientists — notably AI authority Major General Li Deyi — underscores a high-level push to embed artificial intelligence across the People’s Liberation Army. Beijing is framing this as a shift to “intelligent operations,” emphasizing “intelligence supremacy” through AppClouds, multi-domain integration, brain‑machine fusion, intelligent autonomy and unmanned combat. Public PLA writings and demonstrations (unmanned tanks, a 119‑drone swarm) signal ambitions for autonomous tanks, UCAVs, UUCVs, AI-guided missiles (real‑time control, fire‑and‑forget, or in‑flight retasking), space and undersea platforms, and cyber-enabled campaigns that manipulate or blind adversary cognition and command systems. For the AI/ML community the story is consequential: China’s strategy ties large-scale data collection, cloud computing and fast learning algorithms directly to battlefield decision loops and autonomous systems, accelerating research and deployment pressures in perception, real‑time planning, secure communications (including quantum links), human‑machine teaming, swarm coordination and resilient adversarial defenses. Analysts warn this could shift military balance, increase cyber and attribution risks, and create new safety and ethical challenges (accidents, escalation, influence operations). U.S. and allied responses — greater investment in autonomous capabilities and defenses — are already underway, making military AI a central and contested driver of future AI R&D and standards.