China prepares AI-warfare plan for Taiwan amid escalating tension

In Asia Times, Gabriel Honrada said that Chinese military experts are reportedly exploring ‘smart deterrence’ concepts which marks a significant evolution in China’s use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies from tactical and operational military levels to influence strategic-level decision making. 

Ni Yongjie, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of Taiwan Studies, opined in the peer-reviewed journal Cross-Strait Taiwan Studies that China should use AI and other enabling technologies to deter the US and pro-independence factions in Taiwan, in addition to blockade exercises around the self-governing island, the South China Morning Post said, ANI reported. 

Ni further wrote that smart deterrence is already being studied in Chinese military circles. He stated that China should normalize military exercises beyond the median line, the de facto sea border separating China from Taiwan, approaching the baselines of the latter’s territorial waters and cutting off maritime transport.

Such exercises would be a powerful deterrent against Taiwan’s independence and foreign intervention, in addition to nuclear and conventional deterrence, Ni said cited by Asia Times.

China has enacted a long-term and flexible strategy for the self-governing island. This strategy involves periodic military exercises that amount to blockades, with a tighter military noose increasing the threat level. Moreover, it sends the message that any large military exercise could quickly be the real thing – an indefinite blockade of Taiwan to starve it into submission, as per ANI reported. 

Apart from staging military exercises near the baselines of Taiwan’s territorial waters, China should also hold similar exercises in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea and Dongsha Island, which Taiwan controls, he added. 

China has long been able to threaten Taiwan with severe military and economic consequences should it declare independence, but has not been able to convince the population that refraining from taking steps to independence will be met with restraint, rather than reunification on Beijing’s terms, reported Asia Times.

Previously, Asia Times noted that while China has devised numerous military strategic and operational concepts, including informationized and intelligentized warfare, China has not fought a conventional war since the disastrous 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. 

(With ANI inputs)