‘AI is the key to global power status’: Inside China's race to militarise artificial intelligence

China is integrating artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its military to change how it communicates, jams, and fights, according to local media. The country is reportedly advancing an “AI Plus” strategy to implement technologies in its electronic warfare (EW) systems to confuse enemy jammers, according to a South China Morning Post (SCMP) report earlier this month. AI should be able to help Chinese researchers predict how to jam drones that are up to 5,000 kilometers away without using satellites, which the report said will be helpful for the Chinese during solar storms or electronic attacks. China is also reportedly using AI to simulate radio behavior in the air and sea, which could establish instant communication between drones and submarines, SCMP reported. China is seen as the main competitor with the United States in the race to adopt AI throughout all sectors, including the military. Euronews Next takes a closer look at what we know so far about how the country is integrating AI throughout their military. ‘Xi believes that AI is the key to global power status’ In 2017, China published a development plan for the next generation of AI, which explicitly sets the goal of achieving “world-leading levels in artificial intelligence theory, technology and applications by 2030.” It followed that up two years later with its military strategy, in which the government writes that “war is evolving towards informationized warfare, and intelligent warfare is on the horizon,” listing several technologies, including AI, as “gathering pace,” in international military competition. The position towards an “intelligentized” military was further sharpened in a 2022 speech by President Xi Jinping, who calls on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “gain a good grasp of the characteristics of informatized and intelligent warfare” to build “unmanned, intelligent combat capabilities.” The PLA uses the term “intelligentized warfare” to reflect a “systemic effort” to integrate AI, robotics and unmanned systems into platforms and decision-making systems, according to Frank O’Donnell, senior research advisor with the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network (APLN). “Xi [Jinping] himself believes that AI in particular is … the key to global power status in the 21st century,” O’Donnell told Euronews Next. Several articles in PLA Daily, the military’s newsletter, describe China’s desire to build a human-AI model, where a military commander sets the intent and has it executed by the AI, according to a report from the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD), an American think tank. Under this model, the system would “effectively act as digital staff officers,” who assign tasks and coordinate the actions in real time, the report added. The AI endpoint for China will likely not be fully