China wants to catch the USA in AI technology by 2020 and surpass us in 2025. Then China plans to lead the world in economic and military applications of artificial intelligence by 2030. So said former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work at a US Naval Institute talk December 4. Work is a leading thinker and a retired Marine who left the Pentagon in the spring of 2017, so he knows.
"China’s military and commercial AI ambitions pose the first credible threat to United States technological supremacy since the Soviet Union," wrote Gregory Allen for the Council on Foreign Relations. Keeping the US ahead in AI will therefore be one of the Trump presidency’s big challenges across one term or two. In China, the military sells arms itself and owns hotels and businesses. The crossover of economic and military spheres is already a done deal for them.
Work suggested we all read the full Chinese AI strategy. It’s a good reminder that China is never going to be our friend in the way Great Britain, France, Australia, Canada and other allies are.
