Or China makes it inevitable.

Chinese military initiatives in AI are motivated by an acute awareness of global trends in military technology and operations;18 concerns about falling behind the U.S. military, which is perceived and often characterized as the “powerful adversary” (强敌);19 and recognition of potential opportunities inherent in this military and technological transformation.20 “China’s military security is confronted by risks from technology surprise and a growing technological generation gap,” according to the official white paper on “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” released in July 2019.21 “Intelligent(ized) warfare is on the horizon,” the assessment finds, and the ongoing “Revolution in Military Affairs” will change the very mechanisms for victory in future warfare.22 Chinese military scientists and strategists, including from such authoritative institutions as the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, National Defense University, and National University of Defense Technology, envision AI and intelligent weapons playing an increasingly important if not decisive role in future warfare. They closely examine antecedents in U.S. strategy and capabilities to inform their own assessments.23 The PLA’s quest for innovation is an element of the Chinese national strategy to leverage science and technology in pursuit of great power status.24 In the process, the Chinese military is developing more traditional and emerging capabilities, while concentrating on asymmetric approaches against the U.S. military. President Xi Jinping has emphasized, “under a situation of increasingly fierce international military competition, only the innovators win.”25 Moreover, on the importance of “aiming at the frontier of global military scientific and technological developments,” he urged: “We must attach great importance to the development of strategic frontier technologies, striving to surpass the predecessor as latecomers, turning sharply to surpass.”26 As early as 2011, the PLA’s official dictionary included a definition of an “AI weapon” (人工智能武器), characterized as “a weapon that utilizes AI to pursue, distinguish, and destroy enemy targets automatically; often composed of information collection and management systems, knowledge base systems, decision assistance systems, mission implementation systems, etc.”27 Similarly, Chinese military strategists and scientists tend to discuss “AI weapons” or “intelligentized weapons” (智能化武器) more often than “autonomous weapons” (自主武器) in academic and technical writings.28 This terminological difference is subtle but potentially significant, implying a focus on the “smartness” or “intelligence” of weapons systems in selecting and engaging targets.29 For instance, techniques for adaptive or autonomous control can leverage a range of algorithms, including neural networks. Even as the function of certain weapons systems becomes “unmanned” (无人化) and to some degree automatic (自动化), greater degrees of autonomy or “intelligence” in function can remain elusive. While Chinese leaders have prioritized advances in AI as an important direction for military modernization, China’s Central Military Commission has yet to release any policy or official strategy that formally clarifies such plans and priorities. However, in July 2017, the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan called for China to “strengthen the use of AI in military applications that include command decisionmaking, military deductions,30 and defense equipment.”31 In the fall of 2017, Xi, in his address to the 19th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), urged, “accelerate the development of military intelligentization, and improve joint operations capabilities and all-domain combat capabilities based on network information systems.”32 His remarks provided authoritative guidance to pursue military applications of AI that could be integrated across the whole system for future operations.33 This emerging emphasis on “military intelligentization” (军事智能化), or the “development of an intelligent military,”34 extends beyond AI-enabled systems and autonomy to include the development of weapons systems leveraging adaptive control or involving autonomy in various aspects of their operation.35