CHINESE DEBATES ON THE MILITARY UTILITY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The article argues that the Chinese military sees AI as a way to extend its long-standing information-centric strategy, rather than mainly as a means of lethal attrition. It says the PLA aims to crash an adversary's information networks and then eliminate disaggregated elements with long-range precision fires, with AI providing a critical means to that end. It also reports that PLA debate has moved from informationized warfare toward "intelligentized warfare," which the 2019 Defense White Paper described as on the horizon, and that Chinese authors increasingly treat intelligentization as a future stage distinct from informationization.