China's military is running rapid, low-cost artificial intelligence experiments across every warfighting domain - and doing so at a pace the Pentagon's acquisition system cannot match. A Georgetown University review of thousands of PLA procurement documents found many with short development timelines, enabling what the researchers call "fast-paced and relatively inexpensive experimentation."

The findings, published in Foreign Affairs by Sam Bresnick, Emelia S. Probasco, and Cole McFaul of Georgetown's CSET, lay bare a military that is "not waiting for AI breakthroughs" but betting on incremental gains, "Hvylya" reports.

China's speed advantage is partly structural. Beijing provides subsidies, tax incentives, and other benefits to domestic tech companies to repurpose civilian products for military use. This funnels cutting-edge advances in smart manufacturing, robotics, and battery technology directly to the PLA - a civilian-to-military pipeline that bypasses the lengthy procurement cycles typical of Western defense systems.

The U.S. defense acquisition process, by contrast, has long "moved at a glacial pace," the researchers note. The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act included reforms to reduce delays and expand commercial purchasing pathways, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the Pentagon to take a "wartime approach to blockers" slowing AI adoption. The White House has also issued executive orders to streamline acquisition by cutting duplication and centralizing decisions.

But acquisition reform alone will not close the gap, the researchers warn. Military operators need better education on AI's strengths and limitations, and the Pentagon must invest in system reliability, transparency, and cybersecurity before commanders can consistently trust AI tools. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, developing autonomous drones is one thing - deploying them effectively on contested battlefields, training operators, and preventing drone fratricide is quite another.

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