December 05, 2017
Artificial Intelligence and Chinese Power
Beijing's Push for a Smart Military—and How to Respond
The United States’ technological sophistication has long supported its military predominance. In the 1990s, the U.S. military started to hold an uncontested advantage over its adversaries in the technologies of information-age warfare—from stealth and precision weapons to high-tech sensors and command-and-control systems. Those technologies remain critical to its forces today.
For years, China has closely watched the United States’ progress, developing asymmetric tools—including space, cyber, and electronic capabilities—that exploit the U.S. military’s vulnerabilities. Today, however, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing innovations in many of the same emerging technologies that the U.S. military has itself prioritized. Artificial intelligence is chief among these.
In the decades ahead, AI could transform warfare, creating disruptive new capabilities and changing the ways that militaries command, train, and deploy their forces. Those changes will shape the military balance among the world’s great powers.
Read the full commentary in Foreign Affairs.
More from CNAS
-
Commentary
Defense / Technology & National Security
The Dawn of Automated WarfareDrone-on-drone battle is now a central part of the war....
By Greg Grant & Eric Schmidt
-
Commentary
Energy, Economics & Security / Technology & National Security
Scrapping AI Export Controls Is Self-DefeatingBeijing surely has two goals in mind: Signal to domestic companies that they ought to shun American technology as soon as possible, and manipulate Nvidia to reveal how it desi...
By Liza Tobin & Matt Pottinger
-
Commentary
Defense / Technology & National Security
Stop Obsessing Over AGIWhat’s lacking? Thoughtful, deliberate, and evidence-based deployment and adoption strategies....
By Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan
-
Reports
Technology & National Security
Global Compute and National SecurityThe current pathway to breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities relies on amassing and leveraging vast “compute”—specialized chips housed within massive data cen...
By Janet Egan
