New CSET Report Publication by AWM Fellows Sam Bresnick and Cole McFaul
Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting (C5ISRT)
China now boasts world-class artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. It is a leader in
facial recognition technologies, competitive with the United States in developing large
language models (LLMs), and pushing the boundaries in robotics. While some areas of
China’s AI ecosystem are much studied and well understood, others, such as the
Chinese military’s development and deployment of AI-enabled capabilities, are not.
This report attempts to address this gap and provide information on the People’s
Liberation Army’s (PLA) drive to adopt AI for various military applications. In writing
this paper, we examined more than 9,000 unclassified PLA requests for proposal
(RFPs) to glean a partial yet detailed view of the Chinese military’s efforts to acquire AI
for C5ISRT in the land, air, sea, space, cyber, and cognitive domains. These AI-related
efforts include the employment of generative AI but also other related and enabling AI
techniques, such as natural language processing, computer vision, data fusion
algorithms, and more.
In brief, analysis of the RFPs published in 2023 and 2024 indicates that the PLA is
experimenting broadly with AI-related technologies across a range of applications,
including decision-making; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); cyber
offense and defense; and many more. This analysis is part of a series that will focus on
China’s requests for AI and related technologies across all domains of warfare.