Will war enter a new era? In any case, this is what China suggests. In February, Norinco, the Chinese arms giant, presented the P60, a military vehicle capable of autonomous operations at 50 km/h. Powered by DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence company, this vehicle illustrates Beijing’s desire to integrate AI directly into the battlefield, marking a turning point in the country’s military strategy.
The Chinese authorities presented this demonstration as an example of technological rapprochement with the United States, in a context of growing tensions between both powers. But this is not the only asset that the country retains to its credit.
A Reuters analysis of China’s patents, research papers and procurement records shows the scale of the systematic effort to weaponize AI. Although the precise details of the systems remain classified, the documents suggest advances in autonomous target recognition and real-time decision support, modeled on American methods.
Therefore, China seems to want to transform DeepSeek into the central engine of its next-generation weapons. This local artificial intelligence, which has become essential in the People’s Liberation Army’s tenders, embodies Beijing’s desire to achieve true “algorithmic sovereignty”, freeing itself from Western technologies while revolutionizing combat planning.
Its capabilities, integrated with autonomous reconnaissance systems, swarms of drones, robot dogs and immersive command centers, now allow thousands of tactical scenarios to be evaluated in just a few seconds.
Chinese weapons… and American chips
Powered by some of Huawei’s chips, DeepSeek is no longer limited to analysis or simulation: it becomes a decision-making actor on the battlefield, the symbol of a war where artificial intelligence no longer supports humans, but begins to think and act in their place. In particular, at Beihang University, DeepSeek is already being used to improve the decision-making of drone swarms against “low, slow and small” threats.
Officially, Beijing promises to maintain human control over these systems, but the line between oversight and autonomy “is diminishing as AI establishes itself as the tactical brain.” However, behind this transformation is a paradox: despite the desire for technological sovereignty, Chinese researchers continue to use American Nvidia chips along with other Huawei Ascend processors, illustrating a persistent dependence on Western hardware.
The exact use of these components is still unclear, but their presence illustrates China’s initial reliance on Western technologies to accelerate its military capabilities. China remains heavily dependent on foreign electronic chips, particularly the more advanced semiconductors needed for artificial intelligence, advanced electronics and the automotive industry.
In 2024, China imported almost $413 billion worth of chips, more than its oil purchases. Despite the “Made in China 2025” plan and huge public investments to develop a domestic industry, local production still covers only about 30% of the country’s needs.
AI is already on the front line
Among all the current technological changes, “the leap represented by artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the one that will revolutionize the way of waging war, or more importantly, of avoiding it like the atom in its time,” recognized last March the French Prime Minister, then Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, during his speech on defense AI at the Polytechnic School.
In Ukraine, the massive use of drones is already an important step in this transformation. And in a less warlike, but equally conflictive register, AI is now at the center of another battle, that of information. Tech & Co recently illustrated this through the crisis between Venezuela and the United States. While diplomatic and military tensions persist between Caracas and Washington, a true war of digital influence is being waged on social networks: images generated by artificial intelligence and misleading videos proliferate on TikTok, X or Telegram. Given all this, “Terminator” can only endure.
Source: BFM TV
