The People's Liberation Army's Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence Highlighting Integration as Key to "Intelligentization" Goals

For China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its military operations and strategy has become increasingly central to "intelligentization," a top priority of the Chinese Communist Party's General Secretary and Central Military Commission Chairman, Xi Jinping. The PLA views this initiative as essential to its short-, medium-, and long-term goals, the most ambitious of which is matching or exceeding the U.S. military's capabilities by mid-century.

To analyze the PLA's perspectives about working and planning toward this goal, the authors reviewed more than 100 articles from 16 academic journals and newspapers related to the PLA, as well as public statements by senior PLA officers.

Their review indicates that the PLA intends to use AI to enhance its kill chains by strengthening (1) AI integration across its components, (2) cross-domain information integration, (3) multiagent collaboration, and (4) data transmission. The literature also highlights the use of AI in military logistics, a topic that appears frequently in official PLA media coverage.

The authors also find that many PLA decisionmakers are starting to recognize that the path of AI integration will likely require overcoming some major challenges — and integration might create new vulnerabilities that the PLA's adversaries could exploit. As such, the authors provide insight into potential PLA blind spots, and they also suggest related topics to explore in the future.