China, the U.S., Russia and others have ramped
up their contest over artificial-intelligence-backed weapons and military systems.
The buildup has been compared to the dawn of the nuclear weapons age.
Escalating
Competition
·
China,
U.S., and Russia are leading a rapid arms race in A.I.-backed autonomous weapons.
·
Beijing’s
2025 military parade showcased autonomous drones flying with fighter jets,
alarming U.S. officials.
·
The
U.S. rushed production of similar drones via Anduril, while Russia advanced
Lancet drones with autonomous targeting.
Global Players
·
Beyond
the big three, Ukraine, India, Israel, Iran, France, Germany, Britain, Poland
are investing in military A.I. systems.
·
Ukraine’s
war became a testing ground, with hobbyist drones evolving into lethal autonomous
weapons.
·
Europe
announced plans for a joint air defense system
against drones.
Massive Investments
·
Pentagon
requested $13B for autonomous systems in its latest budget.
·
China
matches U.S. spending, incentivizing private industry through civil-military
fusion.
·
Russia
uses the Ukraine war to refine battlefield A.I. systems.
Technology
& Strategy
·
A.I.
enables self-flying jets, autonomous targeting, and real-time strike planning.
·
U.S.
Project Maven (now run by Palantir) integrates A.I. to process intelligence and
generate strike plans with minimal human input (“left click, right click”).
·
China
mirrors U.S. systems, aiming to replicate the Joint Fires Network.
·
Manufacturing
scale gives China an edge in producing autonomous weapons faster than the Pentagon.
Ethical &
Strategic Risks
·
Only
one accord exists: a 2024 U.S.-China pledge to keep human control over nuclear
launches.
·
Russia
has made no commitments.
·
Analysts
warn of inadvertent escalation: autonomous systems could react faster than
human reason, risking spirals of conflict.
·
RAND
simulations showed A.I. counterattacks escalating unintentionally.
Outlook
·
The
race resembles the Cold War nuclear buildup, but with faster, unpredictable
dynamics.
·
Start-ups
and investors now play a critical role, unlike the state-dominated nuclear era.
·
Experts
caution: without clear boundaries, nations risk deploying untested, unsafe systems.
·
As
Palmer Luckey noted, deterrence may work — but assumes rationality, which A.I. systems
may erode.
In short: The
global A.I. arms race is accelerating, with China, the U.S., and Russia at the forefront,
Europe and others catching up, and Ukraine serving as a live battlefield lab. Unlike
nuclear weapons, A.I. systems act at machine speed, raising the risk of unintended
escalation and destabilizing deterrence.
[ABS News Service/13.04.2026]
At a military parade in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping and his
special guests, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the North Korean leader,
Kim Jong-un, watched as Chinese forces showed off several models of drones that
could autonomously fly alongside fighter jets into battle.
The demonstration
of technological might immediately set off alarm bells in the United States. Pentagon
officials concluded that America’s program for unmanned combat drones was lagging
China’s, according to three U.S. defense and intelligence
officials. Russia, too, was thought to be ahead in building facilities that could
produce advanced drones, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly
on military capabilities.
U.S. officials pushed
domestic defense companies to step up. Last month, Anduril,
a defense technology start-up in California, began manufacturing
A.I.-backed, self-flying drones that appeared similar to the ones shown in China.
Production at a factory outside Columbus, Ohio, started three months ahead of schedule,
part of an effort to close the gap with China, one defense
official said.
China’s military
display and the U.S. countermove were part of an escalating global arms race over
A.I.-backed autonomous weapons and defense
systems. Designed to operate
by themselves using A.I., the technology reduces the need for human intervention
in decisions like when to hit a moving target or defend against an attack.
In recent years,
many nations have quietly engaged in a contest of one-upmanship over these arsenals,
including drones that identify and strike targets without human command, self-flying
fighter jets that coordinate attacks at speeds and altitudes that few human pilots
can reach, and central systems run by A.I. that analyze
intelligence to recommend airstrike targets quickly.
The United States
and China, the world’s largest military powers, are at the center
of the competition. But the race has widened. Russia and Ukraine, now in their fifth
year of war, are looking for every technological advantage. India, Israel, Iran
and others are investing in military A.I., while France, Germany, Britain and Poland
are rearming amid doubts about the Trump administration’s commitment to NATO.
Each nation is aiming
to amass the most advanced technological stockpile in case they need to fight drone
against drone and algorithm against algorithm in ways that people cannot match,
defense and intelligence officials said.
Russia, China and
the United States are all building A.I. arms as a deterrent and for “mutually assured
destruction,” Palmer Luckey, Anduril’s founder, said in an interview in February.
The buildup has
been compared to the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s, when the atomic bomb’s destructive power forced rival nations into an uneasy standoff,
leading to more than four decades of nuclear weapons brinkmanship.
But while the implications
of nuclear weapons are well understood, A.I.’s military capabilities are just beginning
to be known. The technology — which does not need to pause, eat, drink or sleep
— is set to upend warfare by making battles faster and more unpredictable, officials
said.
Exactly which nation
is furthest ahead is unclear. Many programs are in a research and development phase,
and budgets are classified. Operatives from China, the United States and Russia
watch one another’s factory lines, military displays and weapons deals to deduce
what the other is doing, intelligence officials said.
China and Russia
are experimenting with letting A.I. make battlefield decisions on its own, two U.S.
officials said. China is developing systems for dozens of autonomous drones to coordinate
attacks without human input, while Russia is building Lancet drones that can circle
in the sky and autonomously pick targets, they said.
Even as the specifics
of the technologies remain veiled, the intentions are clear. In 2017, Mr. Putin
declared that whoever leads in A.I. “will become the ruler of the world.” Mr. Xi
said in 2024 that technology would be the “main battleground” of geopolitical competition.
In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed all
branches of the U.S. military to adopt A.I., saying they needed to “accelerate like hell.”
Billions of dollars
are being poured into the efforts. The Pentagon requested more than $13 billion
for autonomous systems in its latest budget, and has spent billions more over the
past decade, though the total is difficult to track because A.I. funding has been
spread across many programs.
China, which some
researchers said was spending amounts comparable to those of the United States,
has used financial incentives to spur private industry to build A.I. capabilities.
Russia has invested in drone and autonomy-related programs, analysts said, using
the war in Ukraine to test and refine them on the battlefield.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman
for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said China had proposed international frameworks
for governing military A.I. and called for “a prudent and responsible attitude”
toward its development.
The Pentagon and
Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests
for comment.
The dynamics may
resemble the Cold War,
but experts cautioned that the A.I. era was different. Start-ups and investors now
play a role in the military and are as critical as universities and governments.
A.I. technology is becoming widely available, opening the door for countries from
Turkey to Pakistan to develop new capabilities. What’s emerging is a grinding innovation
race without any obvious endpoint.
Ethical questions
about ceding life-or-death choices to machines are being overtaken by the rush to
build. The only major accord on A.I. weaponry between China and the United States
was reached in 2024, a nonbinding pledge to maintain human control over the decision
to use nuclear weapons. Other countries, like Russia, have made no commitments.
Some argued that
A.I.’s impact would be bigger than any arms race.
“A.I. is a general-purpose
technology like electricity. And we don’t talk about an electricity arms race,”
said Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official involved in autonomous weapons
development. “To the extent A.I. is transforming our military, it’s the way that
electricity or computers or the airplane did.”
The Buildup Begins
In 2016 at an air
show in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, a Chinese supplier flew 67 drones in unison.
An animated film separately showed the drones destroying a missile launcher, a demonstration of their capabilities.
Russia, too, was
building its drone arsenal. In 2014, its military planners set a goal of making
30 percent of its combat power autonomous by 2025. By 2018, the Russian military
was testing an unmanned armed vehicle in Syria. While the tank failed, losing its
signal and missing targets, it underscored Moscow’s ambitions.
In Washington, Lt.
Gen. Jack Shanahan, who had previously worked in intelligence at the Defense Department, was assessing whether A.I. could solve a
more immediate problem. The U.S. military was collecting so much data — drone footage,
satellite imagery, intercepted signals — that nobody could make sense of it all.
“There was nothing
in any of the research labs in the military that were capable of generating results
in less than a couple of years,” General Shanahan said. “We had a problem we could
not solve without A.I.”
In 2017, General
Shanahan helped create Project Maven, a Defense Department
effort for the military to incorporate A.I. into its systems. One aim was to work
with Silicon Valley to build software to swiftly process images like drone footage
for intelligence purposes. Google was tapped to help.
But the project
quickly ran into hurdles. The Pentagon’s procurement system, built around legacy
contractors and long timelines, slowed things down.
When word spread
inside Google about Project Maven, employees also protested, saying a company that had once pledged “Don’t be evil” should
not help identify targets for drone strikes. Google eventually backed away
from the project.
In 2019, Palantir,
a data analytics company co-founded by the tech investor Peter Thiel, took over
Maven. New defense tech start-ups like Anduril also emerged,
supplying the federal government with A.I.-backed sensor towers along the southern
U.S. border.
In China, Beijing
pushed commercial tech companies toward defense partnerships
in a strategy called “civil-military fusion.” Private firms were drawn into military
procurement, joint research and other work with defense
institutions. Companies working on drones and unmanned boats found growing military
demand for their technologies.
Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine in 2022 turned theory into reality.
Outgunned, outspent
and outnumbered, Ukraine held off Russia with an improvised arsenal of cheap technology. Hobbyist racing drones were used to attack
Russian positions on the front lines, eventually becoming more lethal than artillery and, in some cases, gaining autonomous capabilities.
Remote-controlled boats kept Russia’s Black Sea fleet pinned down.
Russia adapted as
well. Its Lancet drone, which was initially piloted by humans, has incorporated
autonomous targeting features.
“The four years
of brutality on the battlefield in Ukraine has served as a laboratory for the world,”
said Mr. Horowitz, the former Pentagon official.
In recent months,
Ukraine began sharing its troves
of battlefield data with
Palantir and other firms so A.I. systems can better learn to fight wars.
Across Europe, where
governments are aiming to diminish their reliance on the American military, the
lessons from Ukraine resounded. In February, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and
Poland said they would develop a joint air defense system
to guard against drones.
China also advanced.
At the 2024 Zhuhai Airshow, Norinco, one of the country’s main defense manufacturers, revealed multiple weapons with A.I. capabilities.
One of its systems showed an entire brigade, including armored
vehicles and drones, which were controlled and operated by A.I.
Another craft, unveiled
by the state-run Aviation Industry Corporation of China, was a 16-ton jet-powered
drone designed to serve as a flying aircraft carrier that could deploy dozens of
smaller drones midflight.
‘Left Click, Right
Click’
A week after American and Israeli forces struck Iran in February, a senior Pentagon official
gave a glimpse into what computerized warfare now looks like at a conference livestreamed
by Palantir.
A satellite feed
showed a warehouse. With the click of a mouse, an officer selected a row of white
trucks parked outside to target in real time. In seconds, the A.I. software suggested
a weapon, calculated fuel and ammunition needs, weighed the cost and generated a
strike plan.
It was the present-day
version of Project Maven, which General Shanahan had started and was now run by
Palantir and powered by commercial A.I. The system analyzed
intelligence from various sources, generated target lists ranked by priority and
recommended weapons, all but eliminating the lag between identifying a target and
destroying it.
Embedded with a
military version of Claude, the chatbot made by the A.I. firm Anthropic, Maven helped
generate thousands of targets in the opening weeks of the Iran campaign, a pace
that Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, attributed in part to “advanced
A.I. tools.”
Cameron Stanley,
the Defense Department’s chief digital and artificial
intelligence officer, who spoke at Palantir’s conference, said that what Maven was
doing was “revolutionary.” Human involvement amounted to “left click, right click,
left click,” he said.
The claims about
Maven’s abilities might be overstated and much of the American advantage came from
the scale of data flowing in and the skills of the people using it, said Emelia
Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center
for Security and Emerging Technology.
“It’s not rocket
science,” she said. “I suspect that China already has something like it.”
In a recent report
analyzing thousands of People’s Liberation Army procurement
documents, Ms. Probasco found that China was building systems that mirrored American
ones. In one case, China was trying to replicate the Joint Fires Network, an American
program set up to link sensors and weapons globally so a drone on one side of the
world could cue a strike from the other.
In some areas, China
clearly leads. Its manufacturing dominance means it can produce autonomous weapons
at a scale the Pentagon cannot match.
Inside the Trump
administration, the push for A.I. weapons has taken on
an almost evangelical fervor. Last month, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a security
risk, partly because the
company wanted to limit its technology’s use for automated weapons.
“We will win the
A.I. race,” Jacob Helberg, the under secretary of state
for economic affairs, said last month at the Hill & Valley Forum, an annual
conference in Washington, which he co-founded to bridge Silicon Valley and the government.
At the conference,
tech executives, investors and government officials cheered speakers who called
for tech companies to give the military unfettered access to A.I.
Anduril’s Mr. Luckey
argued that the A.I. arms buildup might prevent major wars. The logic mirrored the
Cold War: If both sides knew what the machines could do, neither would risk finding
out.
“Conflicts between
superpowers will similarly deteriorate if you can build the things that deter warfare
effectively enough,” he said.
Yet deterrence assumes
rationality, while A.I. weapons are designed to move faster than human reason. In
exercises dating to 2020, researchers explored how autonomous systems could accelerate
escalation and erode human control — with some alarming results.
In one scenario,
a system operated by the United States and Japan responded to a missile launch from
North Korea by aFutonomously firing an unexpected counterattack.
“The speed of autonomous
systems led to inadvertent escalation,” said the report by analysts at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit
research organization that works with the military.
General Shanahan,
who retired from the military in 2020 and is now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, said the race
he had helped start kept him up at night. Governments must set clear boundaries
before the technology outruns their control, he said.
“There is a risk
of an escalatory spiral where we’re in danger of fielding untested, unsafe and unproven
systems if we’re not careful, because we each feel like the other side is hiding
something from us,” he said.