China has published military doctrine on attacking adversary AI systems through data corruption, algorithm disruption, and electronic warfare. The United States has no joint military doctrine for autonomous formations at all. David Petraeus and Isaac Flanagan call this asymmetry a looming strategic crisis.
The comparison anchors a section of their Foreign Affairs essay on the autonomous warfare transition, "Hvylya" reports.
Beijing is investing heavily in what it calls "intelligentized warfare," which integrates artificial intelligence into command, targeting, and force coordination. The People's Liberation Army has gone further than any Western military in codifying how to fight both with and against AI-driven systems, the authors note. Russia, meanwhile, is "learning through brutal trial and error in Ukraine, iterating faster than any Western institution," though without a coherent doctrinal framework. Beijing's broader credibility as a security partner has also taken a hit after the collapse of Iran's military capabilities shattered its guarantor image in the Global South.
"Neither competitor will wait for the United States to complete its own transformation," Petraeus and Flanagan warn. The U.S. military's procedures for institutional adaptation "were designed for a time when platforms lasted decades and doctrine evolved between major wars." Revising the Pentagon's core military doctrine normally requires a minimum of 15 months. Full strategic transformation - from concept to validated, fielded capability - typically takes many years. Petraeus has previously explained why Beijing cannot easily project power even when it wants to.
The authors argue the process can be compressed but only through radical steps: authorizing theater commanders to publish interim operational guidance without waiting for the full joint doctrine cycle, embedding autonomous operations into existing war games, and stationing concept developers alongside operational units. The promotion and assignment systems, they add, must be redesigned to "identify and advance officers who can command using software subordinates." The military, they write, "promotes what it values; if it values autonomous competence, it must measure and reward it."
Also read: A Pacific War Over Taiwan Could Dwarf Every U.S. Military Disaster Since Vietnam.