The Department of Defense (DoD) just released their annual report on military developments in the China, calling it the only competitor to the US with the intent and capacity to reshape international order.

DoD requests for bilateral defense engagements and communications to their Chinese counterparts were denied at multiple levels - showing an unwillingness to collaborate by China.

Technology and AI was front and center in the new report. China is rapidly expanding their usage of AI at every level of warfare, as they see future conflicts will primarily be fought with information in what they call “intelligentized warfare”.

The report warns of a new concept being employed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) known as “Multi-Domain Precision Warfare” (MDPW) that aims to leverage AI and big data to quickly identify vulnerabilities in US systems and use “multiple domains” to launch precision strikes directly on those vulnerabilities. For example, the ability to recognize a cyber vulnerability in a natural gas pipeline in the US and knock it offline for potentially weeks at a time.

The Chinese military is heavily investing in domestic hardware companies, especially the semiconductor chip industry, to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers which they see as one of their biggest vulnerabilities. China has also invested over $1B to build a national quantum computing lab, the biggest investment in quantum by a government to date, to help further their technology capabilities.

While the Chinese government has long been known to closely monitor and collaborate with leaders in their tech industry, China is actively working to increase the proportion of private companies contributing to military projects. The DoD report outlined key formal initiatives between China’s military and domestic private companies that promotes R&D collaboration and domain resource sharing. This means outside (US) investments in China’s tech sector will almost certainly be helping to fund new technologies that will be weaponized by the Chinese military.

With the latest DoD report, it's clear that China is intensively focused on AI to fortify its military prowess and position itself as the world’s leading military force. The increasing collaboration between China's private tech sector and its military raises concerns for international stakeholders, especially for the U.S., which needs to be cautious about its technological investments in China.