A few decades ago, China was a grain-importing nation unable to grow enough food to feed its own population. The PLA navy lacked the advanced technologies, including “over-the-horizon” radar, required for blue water operations and it owned no aircraft carriers. Before 2000, “informationized” (信息化, xinxi hua) warfare was only a concept left for future generations to develop. The last two decades, as President Xi Jinping likes to call them, have served as a unique “window of opportunity” for Beijing to catch up militarily and surpass the West. American politicians ignored the speed at which the communist giant was modernizing its military capabilities and developing new ones. The result: today democratic nations face an existential threat from the aggressive communist giant. Xi expects his legacy to be that he remade the world in China’s image.
China is moving quickly from a brown-water navy operating only in its littoral waters to a blue water navy now ranked third behind only the US, Great Britain, and France. Its artificial intelligence today is world-class and a significant threat if China chooses to use it. According to James Barker, of the Jamestown Foundation, “China’s emphasis on AI can be considered a ‘whole of government’ approach, which has important ramifications for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Specifically, China’s ‘military-civil fusion’ (军民融合, jun min ronghe) strategy is intended to facilitate transfers of technology and expertise between the commercial and military sectors, including in the field of AI.”
Last week Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, Director of Intelligence, J2, US Indo-Pacific Command was speaking with a Vice President of INSA (Intelligence and National Security Alliance) when he quoted General MacArthur, who once said that war can be summed up in two words: “too late.” It may be close to the time when we should resurrect and pay attention to his prescient words.
During the last two decades, PLA doctrine has focused on enabling “informationized” (信息化, xinxi hua) warfare. It’s a model of network-centric operations acquired from the American military. Barker believes that over the past five years, China has moved forward the idea that military AI or “intelligentization” (智能化, zhineng hua), “the development and inheritance of military informationization,” is the most likely form of future warfare and where it is best to commit its resources.
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Washington and the rest of the democratic world need to recognize that China is applying AI technology to train neural networks to identify US military aircraft, ships, and armored vehicles; processing images for cruise missiles to improve their ground target detection; and enhancing software already capable of sorting identified threats with above a 90% accuracy level. China still has a long way to go but the distance it has covered since 2000 has dramatically cut the length of the path it still must travel to surpass the United States. The world can no longer call the PLA backward, no can it ignore the strides it is making in the most advanced areas of research. Once America was safely three-to-four generations of technology ahead of the communist giant. That is no longer the case. In May Admiral James Stavridis, who served as the 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, said the military gap is closing and “over the next decade… if the U.S. does not respond [it] will favor China.” Simply stated, Washington cannot allow that to happen if we are to retain our way of life.
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.