The strategic competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly defined by the race for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy. This contest extends far beyond technological one-upmanship, representing a fundamental clash of military doctrines, organizational structures, and philosophical visions for the future of warfare. This report provides a comparative analysis of China’s multi-faceted military AI initiatives—collectively termed the “Military Brain”—and the United States’ efforts to secure a decisive technological edge. While the U.S. currently maintains a foundational lead in key technologies such as advanced semiconductors and aggregate computing power, China possesses a more cohesive, expansive, and arguably more revolutionary strategic vision. Beijing’s approach is not merely to field new weapons but to fundamentally alter the character of conflict, shifting the central arena from the physical battlefield to the cognitive domain. This presents a unique and asymmetric challenge that U.S. strategy, currently focused on achieving “decision advantage” within existing warfighting paradigms, is not yet fully configured to meet. Overcoming this requires the United States to not only accelerate its own technological integration but also to broaden its strategic vision to compete and win in the cognitive contest that has already begun.

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I. Deconstructing the ‘China Military Brain’: From Cognitive Warfare to Intelligentization

The concept of a “China Military Brain” is not a single, monolithic program but rather a strategic constellation of advanced doctrine, ambitious technology projects, and novel operational concepts. It represents a “whole-of-society” endeavor aimed at achieving a revolutionary leap in military affairs, moving beyond the physical and informational to target the cognitive faculties of an adversary. This holistic vision is underpinned by a new warfighting paradigm, specific technological pursuits in brain-machine science, a focus on cognitive dominance, and a state-directed system for harnessing national innovation.

The Doctrine of Intelligentized Warfare (智能化战争): Charting the PLA’s New Paradigm

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is formally charting a new military paradigm centered on AI, viewing it as a historical shift on par with mechanization and informatization.¹ PLA theorists conceptualize this evolution as a progression of military enhancement: mechanization extended the military’s “limbs,” informatization sharpened its “senses” (eyes and ears), and intelligentization will now augment its “brain”.⁴ This is not seen as a mere technological upgrade but as a fundamental change in the character of war.

Core to this doctrine is the concept of “intelligentized warfare” (智能化战争), which PRC writers describe as a new stage of conflict based on the extensive use of AI and autonomy, creating a hybrid of human and machine intelligence.¹ This paradigm is built on three pillars: data, which is considered the “new oil”; algorithms, which will turn warfare into a contest between competing code; and massive computing power.⁵ In this vision, intelligent systems are expected to augment and, in some cases, partially replace human command functions to achieve unprecedented speed and efficiency.⁶

This doctrine extends into highly advanced theoretical constructs. One such concept, articulated by China’s Ministry of Defense, is “Dissipative Warfare” (耗散战). This framework views future conflict as a comprehensive, integrated confrontation across the physical, information, and cognitive domains.⁷ It explicitly merges military offense and defense with political maneuvering, economic competition, and cultural conflict, shifting the strategic center of gravity from an adversary’s military forces to its entire social system.⁷ This reveals a holistic approach to national power where victory is achieved by inducing systemic collapse in an opponent.

The ultimate culmination of this thinking is what PLA theorists call “Meta-War” (元战争). This concept links the physical battlefield with a parallel virtual battlefield and, most critically, the “brain battlefield” (头脑战场) of human perception and cognition.² In this framework, human soldiers and their weapons function as “dual entities,” existing simultaneously in the physical world and as digital twins in a virtual space, able to switch between these realities to simulate, predict, and engage in combat.²

The China Brain Project (中国脑计划): The Technological Pillars

The technological heart of this strategic vision is the “China Brain Project” (中国脑计划), a 15-year national initiative approved in 2016.⁹ Its structure is deliberately dual-use, described as “one body, two wings.” The “body” is the core scientific goal of understanding the fundamental principles of the human brain. The “two wings” represent the project’s co-equal applications: treating brain disorders and developing brain-machine intelligence technologies.¹⁰ This structure provides a benign, publicly acceptable facade for research that directly feeds advanced military capabilities. By framing half of the initiative around medical benefits, Beijing gains access to international scientific collaboration and talent that a purely military program could not, while its Military-Civil Fusion strategy ensures all breakthroughs are immediately evaluated for defense applications. This represents a strategically shrewd approach to pursuing paradigm-shifting asymmetric capabilities.

The project is focused on three key research areas:

1. Brain-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (BI-AI, 类脑智能): This research seeks to move beyond current machine learning by emulating the actual neuronal functioning and architecture of the biological brain, not just mimicking its behavioral outputs. The goal is to create AI that is far more efficient and capable of the high-order tasks that humans perform effortlessly.⁹
2. Connectomics (“Brain Mapping,” 人脑连接组): This involves the empirical and computational effort to map and replicate the brain’s complex structure and functioning. AI is used both to test the resulting simulations and to interpret the vast amounts of data generated from imaging brain sections.⁹
3. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI, 脑机接口): This is the most direct military application, aiming to create high-bandwidth pathways between the human brain and external machines.⁹ PLA-affiliated writings describe using BCIs to allow soldiers to control drones and other robotic systems with their thoughts, to have their sensory perception augmented with digital sensor data (achieving “千里眼,” or thousand-mile eyes), and even to enable a form of battlefield “telepathy” for silent, covert communication in high-risk environments.²

Cognitive Domain Operations: The War for the Mind

Perhaps the most ambitious and potentially disruptive element of China’s strategy is its explicit focus on the cognitive domain. The ultimate goal is to achieve “mind dominance” ¹² by “controlling the brain” of an adversary to subdue their will to fight, thereby realizing Sun Tzu’s ancient ideal of winning without a single battle (“不战而屈人之兵”).⁸

This effort is a supercharged extension of the PLA’s long-standing “Three Warfares” doctrine, which targets public opinion, psychological states, and legal frameworks.⁸ AI and big data are seen as the catalysts that can elevate these concepts to a new level of precision and scale. By harvesting and analyzing massive datasets on populations, the PLA aims to conduct cognitive warfare at a granular level, crafting influence operations at machine speed that are tailored to specific demographics, groups, or even key individuals to shape perceptions, sow discord, and disrupt societal cohesion.⁸

This ambition extends to the development of what U.S. intelligence and PLA writings refer to as “neuro-strike” or “brain-control weaponry” (脑控武器).¹³ While the technological maturity of such concepts is uncertain, the clear intent is to research capabilities that can directly interfere with human cognitive functions, disrupt leadership decision-making, and demoralize entire populations. This represents a profound asymmetric threat that seeks to bypass conventional military strength entirely.

Military-Civil Fusion (MCF): The Engine of Advancement

The engine driving this entire enterprise is China’s national strategy of Military-Civil Fusion (MCF, 军民融合). Personally overseen by Xi Jinping, MCF is a state-directed, whole-of-society effort to eliminate all barriers between China’s civilian research institutions, its commercial technology sector, and its military-defense industrial base.¹⁶ The explicit goal is to ensure that any and all national innovation, particularly in dual-use fields like AI, directly serves the PLA’s modernization.¹⁹

Under MCF, the PLA is able to leverage China’s unique advantages, including its vast, state-accessible data resources for training AI models ²¹, and to tap into the dynamism of its private technology companies.¹⁹ The strategy also facilitates the acquisition of foreign technology and expertise through a variety of means, both licit and illicit, including talent recruitment programs, academic collaboration, and outright theft.¹⁶ While MCF faces its own internal bureaucratic and cultural hurdles ²³, its top-down, state-directed nature provides a powerful mechanism for mobilizing national resources toward a singular strategic goal, creating a stark contrast with the U.S. innovation model.

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II. The American Pursuit of Decision Advantage

The United States’ approach to military AI is philosophically and structurally distinct from China’s. It is rooted in a more pragmatic, capability-focused vision aimed at empowering the human warfighter rather than fundamentally redefining the nature of war. This vision is being pursued through a massive networking initiative, foundational research programs focused on trustworthiness, and a unique public-private innovation ecosystem that is both a source of immense strength and significant friction.

The JADC2 Imperative: A Networked Vision of Warfare

The central organizing concept for the U.S. military’s AI-enabled future is the pursuit of “Decision Advantage”.²⁵ The core premise is that in a future conflict against a peer adversary, victory will belong to the side that can most rapidly and effectively execute the decision cycle: sensing the battlefield, making sense of the information, and acting upon it.²⁷

The primary vehicle for achieving this is Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). JADC2 is not a single weapon system but a broad, conceptual approach to connect sensors, platforms, and personnel from all branches of the military—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force—into a single, unified, AI-powered network.²⁹ The goal is to break down traditional service stovepipes and deliver the right information to the right decision-maker at the “speed of relevance,” enabling commanders to act inside an adversary’s decision cycle.²⁷ This effort is being built upon service-specific contributions, including the Army’s Project Convergence, the Navy’s Project Overmatch, and the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).²⁹ Recognizing the importance of coalition warfare, the concept is evolving into

Combined JADC2 (CJADC2), which aims to integrate the command and control systems of key allies and partners into this network architecture.³¹

The U.S. approach is thus focused on perfecting its existing doctrine of joint, all-domain operations by developing a new set of technological capabilities. Where China’s doctrine speaks of a new conceptual state of being (“intelligentized warfare”), the U.S. focuses on a measurable, operational outcome (“decision advantage”). This makes the U.S. vision more pragmatic and quantifiable, but also potentially less strategically ambitious than China’s revolutionary aims.

Foundational Programs: From Maven to DARPA’s Moonshots

The technological underpinnings of JADC2 are driven by several key initiatives. Project Maven, officially the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, has served as a critical pathfinder for operationalizing AI.³³ Its initial focus was on applying machine learning and computer vision to autonomously detect and classify objects of interest from the massive volume of full-motion video and imagery collected by ISR platforms.³⁴ Project Maven has demonstrated real-world utility, having been used to support the 2021 Kabul airlift and to provide intelligence to Ukrainian forces, proving its value in turning data into actionable intelligence.³³

While Maven operationalizes existing AI, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) pushes the technological frontier. DARPA’s multi-billion-dollar “AI Next” campaign was designed to move the field beyond the limitations of current (second-wave) machine learning toward a third wave of AI capable of “contextual reasoning,” with the goal of transforming AI from a mere tool into a true partner for human operators.³⁶ Building on this, the subsequent

“AI Forward” initiative has pivoted to address what the Department of Defense (DoD) sees as the most critical barrier to widespread adoption: the need for trustworthy AI.³⁸ This effort focuses on developing AI that is explainable, robust, and reliable, with an emphasis on foundational theory, rigorous AI engineering, and effective human-AI teaming.³⁸ This deep institutional focus on trust and explainability represents a core philosophical divergence from China’s approach, which prioritizes performance and political control.

The Public-Private Ecosystem: Harnessing Commercial Innovation

The U.S. military AI strategy relies heavily on leveraging the nation’s world-leading commercial technology sector, a stark contrast to China’s state-centric MCF model.²¹ Programs like Project Maven have been built through partnerships with private industry leaders such as Palantir, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services.³³ This model provides the DoD with access to cutting-edge innovation, a dynamic and competitive ecosystem, and a massive advantage in private R&D investment, which dwarfed China’s by nearly a factor of ten in 2023 ($67.2 billion vs. $7.8 billion).²¹

However, this reliance on the private sector also introduces unique challenges. The cultural and ethical divides between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon can create friction, as exemplified by the employee protests that led Google to withdraw from Project Maven.³³ It necessitates new and flexible partnership models, such as the General Services Administration’s landmark agreement to provide OpenAI’s enterprise tools across the federal government, to bridge these gaps.⁴²

Implementation Realities: The Hurdles to a Unified Network

Despite its technological strengths, the full realization of the JADC2 vision is hindered by significant, primarily non-technological, barriers. The central U.S. challenge is not a lack of innovation but a persistent difficulty with integration. The DoD’s vast, federated structure has proven resistant to the kind of top-down, unified approach that JADC2 requires.

Key implementation hurdles include:

• Inter-service Stovepipes: Deep-seated cultural and budgetary divisions between the military services have led to each developing its own interpretation of JADC2, resulting in a lack of alignment, common standards, and true interoperability.⁴³
• Data Governance and Sharing: A pervasive culture of “data ownership” within individual services and agencies prevents the free flow of information that is the lifeblood of JADC2. Shifting to an enterprise-wide “data stewardship” model has proven to be a major cultural and policy challenge.⁴³
• Bureaucratic and Acquisition Inertia: The DoD’s traditional, slow-moving acquisition system is ill-suited for the rapid, iterative development cycles of software and AI. Overcoming this inertia and moving away from legacy systems is a persistent struggle.⁴⁵
• Over-classification: The tendency to over-classify information creates unnecessary barriers to sharing data both within the joint force and with crucial international partners, directly undermining the goals of CJADC2.⁴⁴

Reports from the Government Accountability Office confirm that the DoD remains in the early stages of defining the detailed scope, cost, and schedule for JADC2, underscoring the immense difficulty of implementing such a sweeping vision across a complex and often fragmented organization.⁴⁶ This reveals the core asymmetry of the competition: the United States excels at creating superior individual components but struggles to integrate them into a coherent whole, whereas China’s state-directed model is designed for integration but faces challenges in innovating those foundational components.

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III. Comparative Assessment: A Tale of Two Visions

A direct comparison of U.S. and Chinese military AI efforts reveals a complex landscape of asymmetric advantages. The question of “who is more advanced” cannot be answered with a single verdict; rather, it requires a multi-layered assessment of technology, data, integration, and strategic vision. The two nations are not simply running the same race at different speeds; they are pursuing fundamentally different goals, driven by divergent philosophies of warfare and national power.

Who is More Advanced? A Multi-Layered Analysis

The leadership in military AI is contested and varies significantly depending on the metric of evaluation:

• Foundational Technology (Advantage: USA): The United States maintains a decisive lead in the most critical enabling technologies. This includes a multi-generational advantage in high-end semiconductor design and fabrication, a critical bottleneck for China.⁴⁸ Furthermore, the U.S. possesses a substantial lead in aggregate compute capacity, which is essential not only for training advanced AI models but also for deploying and integrating them at scale across the military enterprise.⁴⁹ While Chinese models are rapidly closing the gap on performance benchmarks, America’s underlying hardware and systems integration capacity provide a more durable and comprehensive advantage.⁴⁹
• Data Resources (Advantage: China): China possesses a significant advantage in the sheer volume of data available for training AI models. Its large population, centralized data collection systems, and lax privacy regulations create a vast reservoir of information, particularly for developing surveillance and recognition algorithms that have direct military applications in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and automated targeting.²¹
• Operational Integration and Procurement (Advantage: Contested/Leaning China): Analysis from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) suggests the PLA has made “extraordinary progress” in procuring AI systems for combat and support functions, with annual spending estimated to be on par with that of the U.S. military.⁵¹ China’s state-directed MCF model may enable faster and more focused adoption of specific capabilities, such as drone swarms and autonomous undersea vehicles, compared to the bureaucratically encumbered U.S. JADC2 effort.⁵⁰ However, some Chinese defense experts express their own concerns that the PLA remains behind the U.S. in fielding and effectively using AI-enabled systems, indicating this is a highly contested area.⁵³
• Doctrinal Absorption (Advantage: China): The PLA appears to be more deeply and holistically integrating AI-centric concepts into its highest levels of military doctrine and strategic thought.¹ Concepts like “intelligentized warfare” are central to the PLA’s vision of the future. In contrast, the U.S. is still largely focused on fitting new AI capabilities into its existing doctrinal frameworks, wrestling with the organizational changes required for true transformation.⁴⁶

Breadth and Logic of Vision: Holistic Transformation vs. Decisive Advantage

The most significant divergence lies in the scope and ambition of each nation’s strategic vision.

• China’s Vision (Broader): China’s vision is a “whole-of-society” endeavor that is demonstrably broader and more holistic.²⁰ It fuses military objectives with economic, political, and cognitive strategies, aiming not just for battlefield victory but for “mind dominance” and the systemic paralysis of an adversary.⁷ The logic is totalistic: to leverage every instrument of national power, amplified by AI, to achieve strategic goals and reshape the international order.¹⁵ Its primary strength is this top-down strategic alignment; its potential weakness is the rigidity and fragility inherent in a system dependent on a single point of political control.
• U.S. Vision (More Focused): The U.S. vision is more focused, pragmatic, and centered on a military-operational problem: achieving “decision advantage” to win on the future battlefield.²⁶ The logic is to use superior technology to sense, process, and act on information faster than an adversary, empowering human commanders to make better, quicker decisions.²⁷ Its strength lies in its alignment with democratic values, its emphasis on human agency, and its ability to harness a dynamic commercial innovation base. Its primary weakness is its potential narrowness, which risks underestimating and failing to prepare for the broader cognitive and political dimensions of the competition that China is actively prioritizing.

The Ethical Divide: Political Control vs. Principled Responsibility

The ethical frameworks governing military AI in each country represent a fundamental and strategic point of contrast.

• China’s Approach: The PLA’s primary ethical consideration is internal and political: how to reconcile the operational necessity of AI autonomy with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) non-negotiable demand for absolute political control over all military assets.⁵⁵ The PLA’s approach is highly pragmatic and opaque; “ethical” behavior is ultimately defined as that which aligns with Party guidance and maintains Party control.⁵⁵ While China engages in international discussions on AI ethics, its core driver remains political reliability, not abstract principle.⁵⁷
• U.S. Approach: The DoD has publicly adopted a formal, principles-based framework for Responsible AI (RAI).⁵⁹ This framework is explicitly grounded in pre-existing legal commitments, including the Law of War, and established ethical norms.⁶⁰ It emphasizes concepts such as meaningful human control over lethal force, transparency, traceability, and accountability. The United States is actively promoting this framework on the world stage, seeking to establish it as a global standard for responsible military innovation.⁶²

The question of which nation has the “best” or most logical vision is therefore contingent on one’s theory of future great power conflict. If that conflict remains primarily a contest of military force where the speed and precision of effects are decisive, the U.S. vision is well-calibrated. However, if future conflict is primarily a cognitive and political struggle where societal cohesion and the will to fight are the main targets, China’s doctrine is more explicitly designed for this reality. A truly resilient and logical strategy must be able to compete and win in both arenas. Currently, China’s vision is more comprehensive in its definition of the problem, creating a strategic imperative for the United States to broaden its own.

Table 1: Comparative Framework of U.S. and Chinese Military AI Strategies

Attribute	People’s Republic of China	United States
Overarching Doctrine	Intelligentized Warfare / Meta-War	Decision Advantage / JADC2
Core Vision	Holistic transformation of warfare; achieving “mind dominance”	Empowering human decision-makers; achieving speed and precision
Key National Program	China Brain Project (BI-AI, BCI)	DARPA AI Next / AI Forward (Trustworthy AI)
Organizational Model	Military-Civil Fusion (State-Directed)	Public-Private Partnership (Commercially-Led)
Primary Focus	Cognitive domain, BCI, swarm autonomy, systems destruction	Networked C2, data fusion, human-machine teaming, ISR
Ethical Framework	Pragmatic; driven by the need for CCP political control	Formalized Responsible AI (RAI); driven by legal/ethical principles
Key Strengths	Top-down strategic alignment; rapid resource mobilization; vast data access	Foundational tech leadership (chips); superior compute; dynamic innovation ecosystem
Key Weaknesses	Technological chokepoints (chips); potential for systemic rigidity; the paradox of control	Bureaucratic hurdles to adoption; inter-service stovepipes; integration challenges

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IV. The Path Forward: A Five-Year Strategy for the United States

To counter China’s comprehensive strategy and secure a durable advantage in the AI era, the United States must pursue a multi-pronged strategy over the next five years. This strategy must address its primary internal weaknesses in integration while simultaneously expanding its asymmetric strengths and broadening its strategic vision to meet the full scope of the cognitive challenge.

Recommendation 1: Solidify the Foundations – Win the JADC2 Battle at Home

The most significant impediment to U.S. military AI dominance is the failure to effectively integrate its superior technological components. This internal challenge must be the first priority.

Actions:

• Empower a JADC2 Authority: Establish a JADC2 “czar” or a fully empowered joint program office with genuine budgetary and requirements authority over the services’ JADC2-related programs. This body must be empowered to enforce common standards, break down stovepipes, and ensure true interoperability.⁴³
• Mandate Enterprise-Wide Data Sharing: The Secretary of Defense should issue a directive mandating a shift from a culture of “data ownership” to one of “data stewardship.” This must be enforced by a central DoD data governance body with the authority to compel services to make data assets visible, accessible, and intelligible across the joint force.⁴³
• Reform AI Acquisition: Aggressively expand the use of agile acquisition pathways, such as Other Transaction Authority (OTA), for all AI and software-intensive programs. This will create streamlined mechanisms to rapidly transition cutting-edge commercial innovation from the private sector to the warfighter, bypassing legacy bureaucratic hurdles.⁴⁵

Recommendation 2: Expand the Asymmetric Advantage – Compute, Talent, and Alliances

The U.S. must widen its lead in the foundational elements of AI power where China remains most vulnerable and where the U.S. holds a distinct advantage.

Actions:

• Dominate the Semiconductor Race: Double down on policies like the CHIPS and Science Act and coordinate with allies to not only onshore manufacturing but to accelerate R&D into next-generation semiconductor design and advanced packaging. The goal should be to maintain a multi-generational technological lead in the hardware that powers AI.²¹
• Launch a National Defense AI Talent Initiative: Create a concerted national effort to attract and retain the world’s best AI talent. This should include streamlining security clearance processes for AI experts, establishing new talent exchange programs between the DoD and private industry, and reforming immigration policies to create a fast track for top-tier global AI researchers.¹⁶
• Operationalize CJADC2 as a Diplomatic Priority: Elevate the “Combined” aspect of CJADC2 from a technical goal to a core diplomatic effort. This involves deepening collaborative AI R&D, establishing common data and ethical frameworks, and conducting regular, large-scale joint exercises with key allies (e.g., the Five Eyes, Japan, South Korea, and key NATO partners) to build a deeply integrated, networked coalition that China cannot replicate.³¹

Recommendation 3: Counter the Cognitive Threat

The U.S. must develop a comprehensive national strategy to defend against and deter China’s cognitive warfare operations, an area where current defenses are dangerously inadequate.

Actions:

• Establish a National Cognitive Security Center: Create a new, inter-agency center co-led by the DoD, the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission would be to coordinate the detection, analysis, and countering of foreign, AI-driven disinformation and influence operations targeting the U.S. military and public.⁸
• Spur Counter-Influence Technology: Launch a DARPA-led grand challenge to develop advanced, real-time technologies for detecting and attributing AI-generated deepfakes, synthetic media, and coordinated inauthentic behavior online.
• Build Societal Resilience: Invest in public education and media literacy programs to inoculate the American populace against the divisive narratives that are the primary weapons of cognitive warfare, thereby strengthening the nation’s cognitive defenses from the ground up.

Recommendation 4: Beyond Decision Advantage – Crafting a Broader American Vision

To effectively compete with China’s holistic strategy, the U.S. must evolve its own military doctrine to formally recognize and address the broader dimensions of modern conflict.

Actions:

• Develop a Doctrine for Integrated Cognitive-Domain Operations: The Joint Staff, in coordination with the National Security Council, should initiate a formal process to develop a U.S. doctrine for operations in the cognitive domain. This would recognize the human mind as a contested battlefield and articulate how the instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME)—can be integrated to defend against and conduct cognitive operations in a manner consistent with democratic principles.
• This new doctrine must explicitly address the role of AI in both defending against and, where necessary and lawful, conducting influence and psychological operations to deter aggression and shape the strategic environment.

Recommendation 5: Weaponize Responsibility – Leveraging the Ethical High Ground

The U.S. commitment to Responsible AI should be transformed from a perceived constraint into a potent strategic advantage that distinguishes the U.S. and its allies from their authoritarian rivals.

Actions:

• Lead on International Norms: Launch a major diplomatic initiative to build upon the U.S. Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of AI, with the goal of making its principles the foundation for a binding international treaty or a widely adopted set of norms among the world’s democracies.⁶²
• Condition AI Sales and Transfers: In all foreign military sales and technology-sharing agreements involving AI-enabled systems, require partner nations to adopt and adhere to RAI principles as a condition of the transfer. This will help build a global military AI ecosystem based on U.S. standards of safety, ethics, and reliability.
• Highlight the Authoritarian Contradiction: Use public diplomacy and strategic communications to consistently expose the fundamental weakness in China’s approach: the impossibility of guaranteeing safe, reliable, or ethical AI when a system’s ultimate arbiter is not objective law or principle, but the shifting political imperatives of the CCP.⁵⁵

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V. Conclusion

The contest for military AI supremacy between the United States and China is a competition between two profoundly different systems. The United States currently holds a critical advantage in foundational technology, talent, and innovation, but this lead is fragile. China’s broader, more cohesive, and more revolutionary strategic vision—which integrates technological development with a “whole-of-society” mobilization and a doctrine aimed at cognitive dominance—poses a long-term threat that cannot be countered by superior microchips alone.

China is preparing for a future war fought not just on land, at sea, and in the air, but in the virtual space of networks and the cognitive space of the human mind. The U.S., while building a formidable technological arsenal, is still primarily focused on winning a faster and more efficient version of the last war. The nation with the best vision for the future will not be the one with the single best algorithm, but the one that can most successfully integrate its technological prowess, its organizational structure, and its guiding principles into a coherent and resilient whole. The five-year strategy outlined in this report is designed to ensure that nation is the United States, by first fixing its critical internal integration challenges while simultaneously broadening its strategic vision to compete and win in every domain—physical, virtual, and, most decisively, cognitive.

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This report provides a comprehensive intelligence assessment of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) strategic endeavor to develop a military-specific metaverse, termed the “battleverse” (战场元宇宙). Analysis of authoritative Chinese military-technical literature and procurement data indicates that this initiative is not a speculative or isolated technological pursuit, but a core component of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) future warfighting doctrine and a key project within the PRC’s national “Digital China” (数字中国) grand strategy. The battleverse is the logical and necessary culmination of the PLA’s concept of “Intelligentized Warfare” (智能化战争), the designated successor to modern “informatized” conflict.

The PLA envisions the battleverse as a persistent, high-fidelity, virtual-real fused environment that will fundamentally revolutionize military operations across all domains. Its primary purpose is to enable the PLA to achieve “cognitive dominance” over an adversary by seamlessly integrating the physical, virtual, and cognitive (“brain battlefield”) dimensions of conflict. While the comprehensive battleverse remains a future objective, its foundational technologies—particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Twins—are being actively researched, developed, and procured. The most mature applications are currently in advanced training and simulation, where VR/AR systems and AI-driven “Blue Army” adversaries are enhancing training realism and accelerating tactical development.

Concurrently, the PLA is aggressively exploring advanced conceptual frameworks for “Meta-War,” a new form of conflict waged within and through the battleverse. These concepts include combat conducted by virtual avatars, by remotely operated robotic “simulacrums,” and by human soldiers who exist as “dual entities” in both the physical and virtual worlds. This theoretical work, combined with tangible technological progress, presents a significant long-term challenge to the military-technological superiority of the United States and its allies. The PLA’s approach is distinguished by its top-down, doctrine-driven integration and its exploration of higher levels of AI-driven autonomy, creating a potential divergence in the character of future warfare.

This report assesses the strategic drivers behind the battleverse, deconstructs its conceptual architecture, details its current and future applications, provides a comparative analysis with U.S. efforts, and evaluates the associated challenges and strategic implications. The PLA’s pursuit of the battleverse signals a determined effort to master a new form of warfare, one that could provide significant asymmetric advantages in a future conflict, particularly in a scenario involving Taiwan.

I. The Strategic Imperative: From Informatization to Intelligentization

The PLA’s ambition to construct a battleverse is not an ad-hoc reaction to a technological trend. It is the product of a deliberate, decades-long strategic modernization effort, guided by a clear doctrinal vision for the future of warfare and supported by a whole-of-nation grand strategy. Understanding this context is critical to appreciating the depth and seriousness of the battleverse initiative.

The PLA’s Three-Step Modernization Framework

The PLA’s contemporary modernization is structured around a three-phase strategic framework articulated by senior leadership, including PRC President Xi Jinping.¹ These overlapping phases are mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization.¹

• Mechanization (机械化), the process of incorporating advanced machinery, vehicles, and conventional platforms, was the primary focus through the early 21st century and was intended to be largely completed by 2020.¹
• Informatization (信息化), the current phase, involves the introduction of networks, information systems, and data into all facets of military operations, from command and control (C2) and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to cyber operations.¹
• Intelligentization (智能化), first formally mentioned in 2019, is the PLA’s vision for the future. While still pursuing the goals of informatization, the PLA is doctrinally and technologically pivoting toward this next phase, which it sees as a new Revolution in Military Affairs.¹ Intelligentization is defined by the transformative impact of emerging technologies—specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, quantum computing, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), autonomous systems, and the Internet of Things (IoT)—on 21st-century warfare.¹

Recent PLA writings explicitly describe the culmination of this intelligentization phase as leading to “Metaverse War” or “Meta-War,” making the battleverse a defining feature of this future conflict paradigm.¹

Defining “Intelligentized Warfare” (智能化战争)

Intelligentized warfare is the PLA’s core warfighting theory for the 21st century. It represents a fundamental shift in the character of conflict, driven primarily by the maturation of AI.³ PLA theorists draw a clear distinction between this new stage and its predecessors based on the human functions they augment. Whereas mechanized warfare enhanced the physical capabilities of the soldier—their “hands and feet”—and informatized warfare enhanced their sensory capabilities—their “ears and eyes”—intelligentized warfare is conceived as enhancing the cognitive function of the commander and the force itself—the “brain”.⁶ This enhancement is to be achieved through advanced brain-computer interaction and AI-human teaming.⁶

The central tenets of this doctrine reveal why a battleverse is not merely useful, but essential:

• Shift to Cognitive Dominance: The primary objective in intelligentized warfare shifts from achieving information superiority to seizing “cognitive dominance” (制智权).⁶ This is a more profound concept, focused on fundamentally disrupting, degrading, and manipulating the adversary’s decision-making processes. The goal is to render the opponent cognitively paralyzed, effectively turning them into an “idiot” in the battlespace, unable to process information or make sound judgments.⁶
• Expansion of the Battlefield: The domains of conflict expand beyond the traditional physical realms of land, sea, air, and space. Intelligentized warfare explicitly incorporates the virtual space and, most critically, the “cognitive domain” or “brain battlefield” (头脑战场) of commanders, soldiers, and even national leaders as primary arenas for confrontation.¹ Victory in the virtual and cognitive spaces is seen as a prerequisite for victory in the physical world.⁶

This doctrinal framework, with its focus on cognitive paralysis and the fusion of physical and non-physical domains, creates a clear and compelling military requirement for a persistent, integrated, virtual-real environment. The PLA is not simply adopting metaverse technology because it is available; it is pursuing the technology because its pre-existing theory of victory demands it. This doctrinal pull, rather than a simple technological push, indicates a far more deliberate and strategically integrated approach, suggesting that the battleverse concept is deeply embedded in the PLA’s long-term institutional planning.

Linkage to the “Digital China” Grand Strategy

The PLA’s military ambitions are inextricably linked to and enabled by a broader national strategy. The battleverse initiative is explicitly framed within PLA literature as a central component of the PRC’s societal transformation under the “Digital China” (数字中国) grand strategy.¹ Described as the world’s first “digital grand strategy,” this whole-of-nation effort is personally championed by Xi Jinping and aims to “win the future” by achieving comprehensive digital supremacy.¹

The “Digital China” strategy, which has roots in regional initiatives like “Digital Fujian” and “Digital Zhejiang” that Xi oversaw as a local leader, aims for the complete digital transformation of the PRC’s economy, governance, and society.⁸ In this context, the metaverse is seen as the next evolutionary stage of the internet and a critical new frontier for national power.⁹ By leading in its development, Beijing seeks to achieve several national objectives:

• Technological Self-Reliance: Reduce dependency on foreign technology and establish “first-mover advantages” in a critical future industry.⁹
• Economic Growth: Dominate what is expected to be a multi-trillion-dollar global market, further fueling China’s digital economy.⁹
• Norm Shaping: Position the PRC to guide the development of international norms, standards, and governance structures for the metaverse.⁹
• Sovereignty and Control: Extend state sovereignty into the virtual domain, ensuring the digital “spiritual home” of its citizens operates according to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) principles.⁹

This national-level strategic alignment creates a powerful symbiotic relationship, a prime example of the PRC’s Military-Civil Fusion (军民融合) strategy. The PLA’s demanding requirements for a high-fidelity, secure, AI-driven battleverse provide a clear strategic direction and a lucrative market for China’s civilian tech sector, driving national innovation in critical areas like AI, 5G, VR hardware, and advanced computing.¹¹ In turn, the rapid growth of the civilian tech sector, such as China’s massive domestic VR market (estimated at 44% of the global market by late 2020), provides the PLA with a broad, resilient, and innovative industrial and R&D base from which to draw technology and talent.¹¹ This whole-of-nation symbiosis provides a formidable strategic tailwind for the battleverse project, granting it a level of national priority and resource allocation that a purely military-siloed program could not achieve.

II. Deconstructing the Battleverse: Concept, Architecture, and Key Technologies

The PLA’s concept of the battleverse has evolved rapidly from a nascent idea into a sophisticated theoretical construct for future warfare. It is envisioned not as a single piece of software, but as a comprehensive military ecosystem with a specific architecture and a foundation built on the convergence of several key emerging technologies.

Defining the “Battleverse” (战场元宇宙)

The term “battleverse” (战场元宇宙) first entered the PLA’s public discourse in a November 2021 article in the official PLA Daily.¹ Initially, the concept was framed in a defensive, soft-power context. The article proposed using the metaverse to create immersive reconstructions of historical battles to vividly depict the horrors of war, thereby deterring conflict and stimulating a desire for peace among the civilian population.¹

This narrative, however, pivoted with remarkable speed. Within a matter of months, by early 2022, the discussion in official military media had shifted decisively toward building a separate, secure, and highly militarized metaverse designed explicitly to win future intelligentized wars.¹ This rapid evolution from a public-facing deterrence tool to a core warfighting concept is significant. Such a fundamental shift in the official military newspaper is unlikely to be accidental; it strongly suggests that an internal consensus was reached at a high level to prioritize and accelerate the development of the metaverse as a primary warfighting domain. The initial “deterrence” framing may have served as strategic misdirection for external audiences, or it may reflect a genuine but quickly superseded initial thought.

In its current conception, the military metaverse is defined as a new and comprehensive military ecosystem that integrates the virtual and real worlds.¹⁷ It is distinguished from its civilian counterparts by a set of unique military requirements, including:

• High Security: The system must handle highly classified information, requiring robust security protocols far beyond those of commercial platforms.¹⁷
• High Credibility: Simulations and models must be of extremely high fidelity, based on real-world physics and validated data, to be useful for training and operational planning.¹⁷
• Identity Determinacy: Users have pre-determined and authenticated military identities (e.g., commander, pilot, logistics officer) with clear roles and permissions.¹⁷

The Concept of “Meta-War”

Flowing from the battleverse concept is the PLA’s theory of “Meta-War.” This is defined as a new type of military activity that leverages the battleverse’s technological capabilities to achieve the strategic objective of conquering an opponent’s will.¹ The architecture of Meta-War is designed to link three distinct but interconnected battlefields ¹:

1. The Physical Battlefield: The traditional domain of land, sea, air, and space where kinetic actions occur.
2. The Virtual Battlefield: The digital space within the battleverse where simulations, cyber operations, and virtual combat take place.
3. The “Brain Battlefield” (头脑战场): The cognitive space representing the conscious perceptions, situational awareness, and decision-making processes of soldiers and commanders.

The core function of the battleverse in Meta-War is to fuse these three domains, allowing personnel to seamlessly switch between the real-world battlefield and a virtual parallel battlefield as needed. This enables them to engage in live combat, run complex simulations of future actions, and predict outcomes in a fully immersive environment, all in real-time.¹

Core Enabling Technologies

The PLA’s vision for the battleverse is predicated on the successful convergence and integration of a suite of advanced technologies.

• Digital Twins: This technology is the architectural linchpin of the entire battleverse concept. A digital twin is a high-fidelity, virtual replica of a physical asset, process, or even an entire environment that is continuously updated with real-time data from its real-world counterpart.¹⁷ The PLA defines it as a mapping in virtual space that reflects the full life cycle of a piece of physical equipment.¹⁸ It is the digital twin that bridges the virtual and the real. Without accurate, persistent, real-time digital twins of weapon platforms, sensors, infrastructure, and geographical terrain, the battleverse would be merely a sophisticated but disconnected simulation. The digital twin provides the essential data-driven foundation that allows for realistic training, predictive maintenance, logistics optimization, and credible mission rehearsal.¹⁸ The PLA’s progress in creating a functional battleverse can, therefore, be most accurately measured by its progress in developing and integrating digital twin technology across its forces.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): If the digital twin is the skeleton of the battleverse, AI is its brain. AI is envisioned to perform a multitude of functions: generating rich and dynamic virtual scenes, providing real-time battlefield object recognition, powering intelligent “Blue Army” adversaries, and offering intelligent-assisted decision-making support to commanders.³ Crucially, AI systems themselves are expected to be trained within the battleverse through processes of “self-play and confrontational evolution,” allowing them to become “strategists” for conquering the virtual cognitive space without human intervention.⁶
• Extended Reality (XR): XR technologies—including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR)—serve as the primary human-machine interface for the battleverse.¹ VR headsets, AR glasses, and haptic feedback suits are the tools that will provide the immersive, “on-site feeling” for soldiers in training, commanders directing battles, or maintainers repairing equipment.¹⁷
• Supporting Infrastructure: A robust technological foundation is required to support these core components. This includes high-bandwidth, low-latency networking (such as 5G and beyond) to transmit vast amounts of data between the physical and virtual worlds; advanced computing (cloud for data storage and processing, and potentially quantum for complex calculations) to run the simulations; and a ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) to provide the constant stream of sensor data needed to keep the digital twins synchronized with reality.¹ PLA theorists also explicitly mention brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) as a potential future interface for controlling systems directly.¹

III. Applications and Concepts of Operation: Waging “Meta-War”

The PLA’s development of the battleverse is not purely theoretical. It is pursuing a dual-track approach: actively implementing mature, battleverse-related technologies for near-term gains while simultaneously developing radical new concepts of operation for future, fully-realized “Meta-War.”

A. Current and Near-Term Applications (The “Practice”)

The most tangible progress in implementing battleverse technologies is evident in areas that offer immediate improvements to readiness, efficiency, and force development.

• Training and Education: This is the most mature and widely documented application area. The PLA is leveraging immersive technologies to create training environments that are more realistic, repeatable, cost-effective, and safer than traditional methods.⁹

• Skill-Based VR Training: The PLA has fielded VR systems for specific tasks, such as parachute training. These systems use virtual simulation and spatial positioning to expose new paratroopers to a range of aerial emergencies and unfamiliar environments in a risk-free setting, improving their real-world performance and adaptability.⁹ Similar systems are used for training operators of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS), allowing them to practice engaging diverse aerial targets like helicopters, cruise missiles, and fighter jets in a virtual environment.²³
• Tactical VR Training: More advanced systems are emerging for collective training. The “Wisdom Commando VR Training System,” developed by the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), is a prime example. It uses VR helmets, haptic feedback suits, and simulated weapons to immerse a squad of soldiers in a virtual battlefield where they can train alongside both their real teammates and AI-powered virtual teammates. The system leverages key technologies like large-space positioning to allow free movement and machine learning algorithms to evaluate performance.²⁰
• Psychological Conditioning: The PLA is also exploring the use of VR to conduct wartime psychological training. The goal is to create hyper-realistic, high-stress virtual combat environments to better prepare soldiers for the psychological shock of real battle.²⁴

• Wargaming and Simulation (The “Blue Army”): The PLA has long used simulations for wargaming, but is now investing heavily in creating a next-generation, AI-driven “Blue Army”—the PLA’s term for a simulated adversary force, akin to a U.S. “Red Team”.²⁵ The objective is to move beyond scripted, service-level simulations to a dynamic, all-element joint combat simulation platform. The AI-powered Blue Army is intended to perfectly mimic the command decision-making behavior and tactics of a potential adversary, allowing the PLA to rigorously test its own operational concepts, identify weaknesses, and discover “possible blind spots” at a pace and scale impossible in live exercises.²⁵ This effort is augmented by research at institutions like Xi’an Technological University, where AI models like DeepSeek are being used to autonomously generate tens of thousands of potential battlefield scenarios in seconds, transforming simulation from a static, pre-programmed system into an “autonomously evolving intelligent agent”.²⁶
• Equipment R&D, Maintenance, and Logistics: Digital twin technology is the centerpiece of efforts to modernize the entire lifecycle of military equipment.

• Research & Development: The PLA envisions using digital twins to dramatically shorten the R&D cycle for complex platforms like warships and aircraft.¹⁷ By creating and testing virtual prototypes in a realistic, simulated combat environment, engineers can validate designs, assess combat effectiveness, and identify flaws before any physical manufacturing begins, saving immense time and resources.¹⁷
• Maintenance and Logistics: In the sustainment phase, a digital twin of a platform, continuously fed with real-world performance data, can enable predictive maintenance, anticipating part failures before they occur.¹⁸ In logistics, digital twins of supply chains and transportation networks can create a system of “intelligent war logistics,” allowing for a more flexible, on-demand, and resilient supply chain that can adapt to the dynamic needs of the battlefield.¹⁸
• Procurement and Development Ecosystem: The PLA’s commitment is reflected in its procurement activities and the emergence of a specialized development ecosystem. Analysis of PLA procurement records reveals a clear focus on acquiring “smart” and “intelligent” systems, including augmented reality sandboxes for training and intelligent interactive control systems.²⁸ A 2020 analysis showed significant purchasing in intelligent and autonomous vehicles and AI-enabled ISR, sourced from a diverse ecosystem of both traditional state-owned defense enterprises and smaller, non-traditional vendors.¹⁵ Specialized entities are also emerging, such as the “Digital Twin Battlefield Laboratory,” which offers bespoke R&D services, consulting, and the construction of digital twin test ranges, indicating a professionalization of the field.³⁰

B. Future Combat Concepts (The “Theory of Meta-War”)

Beyond near-term applications, PLA strategists are developing highly advanced, and in some cases radical, theories for how a fully realized battleverse will change the nature of combat itself. These concepts are detailed in an article titled “Meta-War: An Alternative Vision of Intelligentized Warfare” and represent the PLA’s theoretical end-state for metaverse-enabled conflict.¹

• The Three Methods of “Meta-War”:

1. “(Virtual) Clone/Avatar [分身] Combat in the Virtual World”: This form of combat takes place entirely within the digital realm of the battleverse. It encompasses activities like cyber warfare, psychological operations, and the manipulation of public opinion, conducted from behind the scenes to shape the battlespace before and during a conflict.¹ On the virtual “front lines,” combatants would use avatars to conduct highly realistic pre-battle training, mission rehearsals, and simulated combat exercises.¹
2. “Simulacrum/Imitation [仿身] Combat in the Real World”: This concept describes real-world combat where human soldiers are replaced on the front lines by weaponized “simulacrums.” These are not fully autonomous robots but rather platforms—such as humanoid robots, bionic machines, or mechs—that are controlled in real-time by human operators from a safe distance.¹ These simulacrums would carry the human operator’s perception and intent onto the battlefield, allowing them to perform dangerous and complex tasks. The control interfaces could include remote controls, tactile devices, or even direct brain-computer interfaces.¹ This concept represents a pragmatic approach to the challenges of fully autonomous AI. Instead of waiting for a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence that can handle the complexities and ethical dilemmas of combat, this model uses the human brain as the advanced processor, effectively “teleporting” a soldier’s cognitive abilities into an expendable, physically superior machine. It leverages the unique strengths of both humans (adaptability, creativity, ethical judgment) and machines (speed, endurance, resilience) to field a highly capable semi-autonomous force in the near-to-mid term.
3. “Incarnation/Embodiment [化身] Combat in Parallel Worlds”: This is the ultimate synthesis of the first two concepts, representing the full fusion of the real and virtual. In this mode of combat, human soldiers, their virtual avatars, and their controlled simulacrums would operate in unison across parallel realities.¹ A human soldier and their weapon system would function as a “dual entity,” existing simultaneously in the physical world and as a digital twin in the virtual world. They would be capable of switching between and interacting across these realities. In this paradigm, victory might not be determined solely by physical destruction but by which side first achieves a critical objective in the virtual world, such as discovering a hidden key or disabling a virtual command node, which then translates to a decisive advantage in the real world.¹

• The Centrality of the “Brain Battlefield” (头脑战场): Underlying all three methods of Meta-War is the focus on the “brain battlefield”—the cognitive state of the adversary.¹ The ultimate purpose of fusing the virtual and real is to create an environment where the PLA can manipulate the enemy’s perception of reality. By using highly deceptive information, injecting false virtual targets into an enemy’s augmented reality display, or creating confusing scenarios, the PLA aims to directly attack the enemy’s cognitive processes, interfering with their judgment, slowing their decision-making, and inducing fatal errors.¹⁰ This represents a profound doctrinal shift away from a primary focus on physical attrition. The goal of Meta-War is not just to destroy the enemy’s forces, but to achieve a state of cognitive paralysis, shattering their will and ability to fight by making them incapable of trusting their own senses and systems. A successful campaign might result in an enemy force that is physically intact but rendered completely combat-ineffective, achieving victory with potentially less kinetic violence.

IV. The Geopolitical Battlefield: U.S.-China Competition in the Military Metaverse

The PLA’s pursuit of a battleverse is not occurring in a vacuum. It is a central element of its broader strategic competition with the United States, which is pursuing its own, parallel efforts to develop next-generation synthetic training and operational environments. While there are technological similarities, a comparative analysis reveals significant divergences in strategic vision, doctrinal approach, and organizational structure.

China’s Approach: Top-Down, Doctrine-Driven, and Integrated

As previously established, the PLA’s battleverse initiative is a key component of a unified, top-down national and military strategy.¹ This provides a coherent vision that integrates technological development with a pre-defined warfighting doctrine—”Intelligentized Warfare.” The explicit goal is to leverage these technologies to generate “asymmetric advantages” against the United States, which the PLA regards as a “strong enemy” and its primary strategic competitor.²⁹ A defining feature of this approach is the PLA’s doctrinal willingness to explore higher levels of AI autonomy. PLA writings suggest a desire to remove the human soldier from certain decision-making loops where possible, believing that machine-driven speed can provide a decisive edge in achieving “decision dominance”.³¹

The U.S. Approach: Bottom-Up, Technologically Focused, and Federated

The United States does not use the term “battleverse,” but its armed services and research agencies are developing a suite of highly advanced capabilities that aim to achieve similar outcomes in training and operations.³³ The U.S. effort, however, is more federated and appears to be driven more by technological opportunity than by a single, overarching new doctrine.

• U.S. Army Synthetic Training Environment (STE): This is one of the Army’s top modernization priorities, designed to revolutionize training by converging live, virtual, constructive, and gaming environments into a single, interoperable platform.¹¹ The STE is software-focused, leverages cloud computing, and is designed to be accessible to soldiers at their “point of need,” from home station to deployed locations.³⁴ Its goal is to allow soldiers to conduct dozens of “bloodless battles” in a realistic virtual world before ever seeing combat.³⁴
• U.S. Air Force Digital Twin Programs: The U.S. Air Force is a global leader in the practical application of digital twin technology. Notable projects include the creation of a complete, engineering-grade digital twin of the F-16 Fighting Falcon to streamline sustainment, modernization, and repairs ³⁸, and the development of a massive, installation-scale digital twin of Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. This virtual replica of the base is used to manage its multi-billion-dollar reconstruction after a hurricane, optimize planning, and run realistic security simulations, such as active shooter drills.³⁹ These programs demonstrate a high level of maturity in deploying the foundational technology of any military metaverse.
• DARPA Research: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is pushing the technological frontier. Its programs are not only developing the building blocks of future synthetic environments but are also proactively researching defenses against the threats they might pose. Programs like Perceptually-enabled Task Guidance (PTG) are developing AI assistants that can guide personnel through complex physical tasks using augmented reality.⁴¹ More critically, there is a striking parallel between the PLA’s offensive cognitive warfare concepts and DARPA’s defensive research. The PLA is actively theorizing about using the metaverse to conduct cognitive attacks to “confuse the opponent’s cognition” and “mislead their decision-making”.¹⁰ In response, DARPA’s Intrinsic Cognitive Security (ICS) program is explicitly designed to build tactical mixed reality systems that can protect warfighters from precisely these kinds of “cognitive attacks,” such as “information flooding,” “injecting virtual data to distract personnel,” and “sowing confusion”.⁴² This indicates that U.S. defense planners are taking this threat vector seriously, and the competition is already well underway at the conceptual and R&D level. DARPA is, in effect, attempting to build the shield for a sword the PLA is still designing.

Comparative Analysis: Key Divergences

The competition between the U.S. and China in this domain is not a simple technology race but a clash of strategic philosophies. The U.S. appears to possess more advanced individual components and a more vibrant R&D ecosystem, but China’s top-down, integrated approach may allow for faster and more cohesive implementation of a unified vision. The strategic contest may hinge on which model proves more effective: the U.S. model of federated innovation and gradual integration into existing structures like Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), or China’s model of unified, doctrine-driven development.

The most critical point of divergence is the doctrinal approach to autonomy. U.S. military doctrine, policy, and ethics heavily prioritize a “human-in-the-loop” or human-machine teaming paradigm, where AI serves as an assistive tool to enhance, not replace, human decision-making.³¹ In contrast, PLA writings are more ambitious, exploring concepts of greater AI autonomy and explicitly discussing the potential advantages of removing the human from the decision-making process to achieve superior speed and “decision dominance”.³¹ This fundamental difference in philosophy could lead to two very different types of “intelligentized” forces in the future.

Table 1: Comparative Analysis of U.S. and PRC Military Metaverse Initiatives

Feature	U.S. Synthetic Training Environment (STE) & Related Programs	PRC “Battleverse” (战场元宇宙)
Primary Doctrine	Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2); Human-Machine Teaming	Intelligentized Warfare (智能化战争); Cognitive Dominance
Key Programs	Army STE, USAF Digital Twin (F-16, Tyndall AFB), DARPA research (ICS, PTG)	CETC VR Systems, Digital Twin Battlefield Lab, AI-driven “Blue Army” Simulations
Technological Focus	Interoperability, COTS integration, augmented reality (IVAS), cloud computing	AI-driven autonomy, digital twins, VR immersion, brain-computer interfaces
Development Status	Multiple programs in advanced development and initial fielding (demonstrating high component maturity)	Extensive conceptual work; foundational technologies in active development and procurement (demonstrating high strategic integration)
Approach to Autonomy	“Human-in-the-loop” prioritized; AI as an assistive tool for human decision-makers	Exploration of higher degrees of AI autonomy; potential for machine-driven decision-making to gain speed

V. Assessment of Challenges, Vulnerabilities, and Strategic Implications

Despite the PLA’s ambitious vision and strategic commitment, the path to a fully functional battleverse is fraught with significant internal challenges and creates new strategic vulnerabilities. Realizing this complex ecosystem is a monumental undertaking, and its successful implementation has profound implications for regional security, particularly concerning a potential conflict over Taiwan.

Internal PLA Challenges

Chinese military experts and technical analysts are themselves candid about the significant barriers the PLA faces.

• Technological and Integration Hurdles: The technical challenges are immense. In a comprehensive review of Chinese-language defense journals, PLA officers and defense industry researchers identified several key concerns. These include the ability to guarantee network and cyber security for such a complex system, the difficulty of maintaining robust communications in a high-intensity conflict, and the need to develop the high-end sensors required to feed the digital twins with accurate data.⁴⁵ Integrating dozens of disparate, specialized AI systems from various vendors into a coherent, multi-domain “system of systems” is an enormous software and systems engineering challenge that no military has yet solved.⁴⁶
• Data and AI Trustworthiness: The entire concept of intelligentized warfare hinges on the reliability of data and the trustworthiness of AI. However, AI systems are notoriously vulnerable to flawed, biased, or maliciously manipulated input data, which can lead to catastrophic errors in judgment.⁴⁶ Many Chinese experts express deep misgivings about deploying insufficiently trustworthy AI systems in lethal contexts, citing the risks of unintended escalation, civilian casualties, and friendly fire incidents.⁴⁵ The inherent “black box” nature of some advanced AI models makes it difficult for human commanders to understand, verify, and ultimately trust their recommendations, a critical barrier to effective human-machine teaming.⁴⁶
• Systemic Vulnerability to Attack: The battleverse’s greatest strength—its hyper-connectivity and total integration—is also its greatest weakness. This creates a strategic paradox: while it promises unprecedented operational coherence, it also presents a systemic, single-point-of-failure vulnerability. PLA thinkers acknowledge that the algorithms and networks at the core of the battleverse are prime targets. A successful cyber or electronic attack that compromises the integrity of the battleverse’s data or manipulates its core algorithms could lead to a total loss of combat capability for the entire force.⁴⁷ This suggests that a U.S. strategy should not necessarily be to build a mirror-image battleverse, but to develop the asymmetric capabilities required to disrupt, deceive, and disable the PLA’s version.
• Ethical and Legal Dilemmas: The prospect of intelligentized warfare raises profound ethical and legal questions that Chinese strategists are beginning to grapple with. These include the morality of delegating life-and-death decisions to machines and the intractable problem of assigning legal accountability for war crimes committed by an autonomous system.⁴⁸

Strategic Implications for the United States and Allies

The PLA’s development of a battleverse, even if only partially successful, will have significant strategic implications.

• The Taiwan Scenario: The battleverse is a powerful tool for a potential Taiwan contingency. The PLA could leverage a high-fidelity digital twin of Taiwan and its surrounding environment to wargame an invasion scenario thousands of times, allowing them to meticulously test operational plans, identify weaknesses in Taiwan’s defenses, and perfect their joint force coordination at minimal cost and risk.¹⁸ This would enable the PLA to enter a conflict with a level of rehearsal and optimization previously unimaginable. Furthermore, the initial phase of an invasion could be non-kinetic, launched from within the battleverse. It could consist of massive, coordinated cyber, electronic, and cognitive attacks designed to paralyze Taiwan’s command and control, sow chaos and confusion, and degrade its will to fight before a single ship or plane crosses the strait.¹⁰ The battleverse also provides a new and potent platform for “gray zone” activities. In the years leading up to a potential conflict, the PLA could use the virtual space to conduct persistent, low-threshold operations against a digital twin of Taiwan—testing cyber defenses, mapping critical infrastructure, and running subtle cognitive influence campaigns, all below the threshold of armed conflict but effectively shaping the future battlefield.
• Accelerated PLA Modernization: A functional battleverse would act as a powerful force multiplier for PLA modernization. It would create a virtual feedback loop, allowing the PLA to develop, test, and refine new technologies, tactics, and doctrine at a speed that cannot be matched by traditional, resource-intensive live exercises. This could dramatically shorten the timeline for the PLA to achieve its goal of becoming a “world-class” military capable of fighting and winning wars against a strong adversary.
• Risk of Rapid Escalation: A key objective of intelligentized warfare is to accelerate the decision-making cycle (the OODA loop) to a speed that overwhelms an opponent. However, this reliance on AI-driven speed could have a destabilizing effect in a crisis. It could drastically shorten the time available for human deliberation and diplomacy, potentially leading to a rapid and unintended escalation from a regional crisis to a major conflict.⁴⁶

Conclusion and Recommendations

The People’s Liberation Army’s pursuit of a military metaverse, or “battleverse,” is a serious, coherent, and long-term strategic endeavor that is deeply integrated with its national and military modernization goals. It is the designated operational environment for the PLA’s future warfighting doctrine of “Intelligentized Warfare.” While the vision of a fully fused virtual-real battlefield remains aspirational, and significant technical and systemic challenges persist, the conceptual groundwork is well-established, and foundational investments in enabling technologies like AI, digital twins, and VR are well underway. The most critical divergence from Western military development lies in the PLA’s doctrinal embrace of AI-driven autonomy and its explicit focus on achieving victory through cognitive dominance.

Over the next five years, the PLA will likely field advanced, networked VR/AR training and large-scale simulation systems across all services, significantly improving training realism, joint operational proficiency, and tactical development speed. Within a decade, it is plausible that the PLA will be experimenting with integrated “Meta-War” concepts in major exercises, fusing digital twin environments with live forces and testing rudimentary “simulacrum” platforms under direct human control. This trajectory presents a formidable challenge that requires a proactive and multi-faceted response from the United States and its allies.

Based on this assessment, the following recommendations are offered for the U.S. intelligence community, the Department of Defense, and associated policymakers:

1. Prioritize Intelligence Collection on PLA Digital Twin Development: Intelligence collection and analysis should shift from a primary focus on individual hardware procurement to tracking the PLA’s progress in developing and integrating high-fidelity digital twins. Monitoring the creation of virtual replicas of key platforms (e.g., aircraft carriers, advanced destroyers, 5th-generation aircraft) and strategic locations (e.g., Taiwan, Guam, key U.S. bases in the Indo-Pacific) will serve as the most accurate barometer of the PLA’s true battleverse capability and its operational readiness for specific contingencies.
2. Invest in “Red Team” Cognitive and Algorithmic Warfare Capabilities: The Department of Defense should fund and prioritize the development of offensive capabilities designed specifically to target the inherent vulnerabilities of a centralized, hyper-networked battleverse architecture. This includes advanced research in data poisoning, algorithm manipulation, network deception, and cognitive attacks designed to sow mistrust between PLA operators and their AI systems. The goal should be to develop the means to turn the battleverse’s greatest strength—its integration—into a critical vulnerability.
3. Accelerate and Integrate U.S. Synthetic Environment Efforts: While maintaining a firm doctrinal commitment to human-centric command and control, the Department of Defense should accelerate the integration of its disparate synthetic environment programs (e.g., Army STE, Air Force digital twins, Navy trainers) into a coherent, JADC2-enabled operational environment. The strategic objective should be to outpace the PLA’s integration efforts by leveraging the U.S. technological advantage in areas like cloud computing, COTS software, and advanced AI to create a more flexible, resilient, and effective human-machine teaming ecosystem.
4. Establish Ethical and Policy Guardrails for AI in Warfare: The United States should lead a robust and sustained dialogue with key allies to establish clear norms, ethical red lines, and policies for the use of AI and autonomous systems in combat. Codifying a commitment to meaningful human control will create a clear strategic and moral distinction from the PLA’s more ambiguous doctrinal path, strengthen allied cohesion on this critical issue, and provide a framework for future arms control discussions.

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