July 20, 2024
How AI is changing warfare
It is unclear whether the PLA has the tech talent to create world-class systems, he points out, and its centralised decision-making might impede AI decision-support. Many Chinese experts are also worried about “untrustworthy” AI. “The PLA possesses plenty of lethal military power,” notes Jacob Stokes of CNAS, another think-tank, “but right now none of it appears to have meaningful levels of autonomy enabled by AI”.
China’s apparent sluggishness is part of a broader pattern. Some, like Kenneth Payne of King’s College London, think AI will transform not just the conduct of war, but its essential nature. “This fused machine-human intelligence would herald a genuinely new era of decision-making in war,” he predicts. “Perhaps the most revolutionary change since the discovery of writing, several thousand years ago.” But even as such claims grow more plausible, the transformation remains stubbornly distant in many respects.
Read the full story from The Economist.
More from CNAS
-
Sharper: India and the Quad
Commentary
Despite recent bilateral challenges, India’s relationship with the United States and its leadership within the Quad remains indispensable for an Indo-Pacific that is cooperati...
By Keerthi Martyn & Charles Horn
-
How China Could Use U.S. Farmland to Attack America
Video
Chinese entities have been acquiring land in key locations near U.S. military bases, sparking national security concerns about possible spying — or even a potential attack. Fo...
By David Feith
-
Japan’s Iron Lady: A Prime Minister for the Trump Era?
Commentary
This article was originally published in The Diplomat. A protégé of Abe Shinzo, newly elected Liberal Democratic Party President Takaichi Sanae inherits her mentor’s approach...
By Ryan Claffey
-
CNAS Insights | Mr. President, You Are Losing India
Commentary
Last month, after Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Narendra Modi clasped hands in Tianjin, China, President Donald Trump concluded that the United States had “lost India and Ru...
By Lisa Curtis & Richard Fontaine
