Minds at War: China’s Pursuit of Military Advantage through Cognitive Science and Biotechn

Curator note

The United States is starting to confront unprecedented challenges to the military and technological superiority that it has enjoyed in recent history. he People’s Republic of China (PRC) is emerging as a powerhouse across a range of emerging technologies, and Chinese leaders recognize today’s technological revolution as a critical, even historic, opportunity to achieve strategic advantage.1 As Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Commander-in-Chief of the CMC Joint Operations Center, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping has highlighted the importance of military innovation to “keep pace with the times” (与时俱进) and adapt to the global revolution in military affairs.
Indeed, Xi has declared, “In circumstances of increasingly intense global military competition, only
the innovators win.”3 Responding to this directive and imperative, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been actively exploring a range of new theories, capabilities, and technologies that are believed to be critical to future operational advantage.4 The PLA is looking to improve its capacity to leverage academic and commercial developments in the process through China’s national strategy of “military-civil fusion” (军民融合). 5 In particular, Chinese innovation is poised to pursue synergies among brain science, artificial intelligence (AI), and biotechnology that may have far-reaching implications for its future military power and aggregate national competitiveness. Chinese military leaders appear to believe that such emerging technologies will be inevitably weaponized, often pointing to a quotation by Engels: “Once technological advancements can be used for military purposes and have been used for military purposes, they very immediately and almost necessarily, often violating the commander’s will, cause changes or even transformations in
the styles of warfare.”6 The PLA intends to achieve an operational advantage through seizing the initiative in the course of this transformation.