China’s Military AI Wish List | Center for Security and Emerging Technology

Reports

China’s Military AI Wish List

Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting (C5ISRT)

Emelia Probasco,

Sam Bresnick,

and Cole McFaul

February 2026

This report examines thousands of Chinese-language open-source requests for proposal (RFPs) published by the People’s Liberation Army between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2024. The RFPs the authors reviewed offer insights into the PLA’s priorities and ambitions for AI-enabled military technologies associated with C5ISRT: command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting.

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Takeaways

In analyzing these requests for proposal (RFPs), the authors find that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing AI-enabled capabilities across all domains. The applications include decision support systems (AI-DSS), sensor enhancement tools, data fusion algorithms, and much more.

The RFPs reflect China’s desire to generate, augment, and fuse increasing quantities of data to speed military decision-making and improve the precision and efficacy of the PLA’s operations. Specifically, the authors found requests for AI-DSS that can leverage open-source data for strategic decision-making. They also came across requests for AI-DSS to support tactical decisions, such as for targeting. While many militaries are investing in AI-DSS, these systems are of particular importance to the PLA, which views them as a means of compensating for perceived weaknesses in its officer corps.

More specifically, the authors found an emphasis on AI applications that would counter perceived U.S. military advantages. This emphasis was especially apparent in numerous requests for technologies to detect U.S. naval assets on and under the sea, as well as technologies that could counteract U.S. space-based systems.

Outside of the maritime and space domains, the PLA’s RFPs reveal it aims to acquire increasingly sophisticated surveillance and cognitive domain capabilities. RFPs for facial and gait recognition systems, digital surveillance tools capable of recovering deleted data, and technologies for generating and detecting deepfakes point to ongoing efforts to better secure military installations and develop AI-enabled psychological warfare and cognitive targeting tools.

These documents, which are published by the PLA, are strikingly explicit in their requests for sensitive capabilities, including those related to operations in the space, cyber, and cognitive domains. The level of specificity is notable and likely reflects an effort to access advanced capabilities from nontraditional, commercial vendors outside China’s traditional defense industrial base. Moreover, most of the RFPs involve relatively small budgets and short acquisition timelines—often three to six months—suggesting an emphasis