Chinese Intelligentized Warfare Grows Stronger
On Sunday, a US Army intelligence report revealed China’s growing reliance on AI to enhance the China intelligentized warfare precision attacks, raising ethical and strategic concerns on geopolitical warfare.
The “The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations” report, issued by the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), details the China AI military integration strategy. Beijing’s strategy outlines how the country can turn intelligent technology into advanced weapon systems through real-time analytics and autonomous decision making for long-range strikes.
This reflects a wider pattern in modern warfare, in which new technologies redefine operational concepts and challenge existing military principles.
AI Weapons in China’s Military Innovation
China’s Multi-Domain Precision Warfare (MDPW) merges AI with command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) networks. This AI missile precision strike allows China, according to the TRADOC report, to “rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the US operational system and combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes”.
The report highlights that Chinese efforts are directed at reducing human involvement in decision making and instead increasing machine driven guidance for decisions with “decision dominance.”
“Intelligentized warfare demonstrates the importance China places on integrating AI into its military decision-making,” TRADOC stated.
“China’s leadership is concerned about corruption within the PLA’s ranks and, to the extent possible, wants to remove the individual soldier from the decision-making process in favor of machine-driven guidance.”
This is completely in contrast to the US military’s emphasis on human machine reliance.
What Washington Did. What Beijing Will Do.
The Department of Defense (DoD) is also moving aggressively on AI, although in a human-centric manner, as seen in projects like the Army’s Project Convergence and the Air Force’s Golden Horde – uses AI to analyze data and provide threat identification, suggesting actions but leaves decision making humans. For example, AI in Project Convergence cut sensor-to-shooter decision time from 20 minutes to seconds, while respecting human oversight.
Across the Pacific Ocean, China’s MDPW favors autonomous systems for offensive operations, minimizing human involvement to avoid errors and corruption. The contrast in both applied strategy for AI in military between the Chinese intelligentized warfare to that of the US is the level of similarity in both strategies, but different in its application – equal measure of art and science.
TRADOC speculates on a Chinese MDPW approach resembling the US’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). JADC2 – built for integrating insights across many domains through technical standards and enabling “gateway” technologies.
In both technical side the ambition and moral considerations of the China intelligentized warfare approaches would fall behind compared to strategies being developed within the US.
Final Thoughts
Questions arise about the future of multi-domain precision warfare ethics and global security as China’s AI driven warfare proliferates. As AI’s capabilities grow, the balance between human judgment and machine autonomy will define how conflicts are fought.
A depedent reliance on AI in the China intelligentized warfare defines the country’s military strategic priorities but ushers in a plethora of dependence on automation and ethicalities risks due to the absence of human presence.
What is important for the US is how to keep tech on site while preserving ethical standards. The face of the next generation of warfare, and deep outcomes for international stability and military strategy, will be shaped by how human and machine decision making shall work together in the future.
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