Reports

CSET produces evidence-driven analysis in a variety of forms, from informative graphics and translations to expert testimony and published reports. Our key areas of inquiry are the foundations of artificial intelligence — such as talent, data and computational power — as well as how AI can be used in cybersecurity and other national security settings. We also do research on the policy tools that can be used to shape AI’s development and use, and on biotechnology.

Report

China’s Military AI Wish List

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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Read our translation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at a major Chinese S&T conference in June 2024.

Read our translation of a draft Chinese government framework for a system of standards for AI.

Read our translation of a report by a Chinese state-run think tank that describes how the Chinese government and foreign governments are using large AI models.

Read our translation of an annual white paper by a Chinese state-run think tank that analyzes the computing power landscape, in China and globally, as of late 2022.

Read our translation of a preliminary draft of China’s proposed AI Law that has circulated among legal scholars.

Read our translation of a Chinese industrial policy directive that aims to speed up the process of getting manufacturing prototypes into commercial production.

Read our translation of China's 2022 "Document 79" on state-run enterprise reform. U.S. media have reported that China strictly limited the dissemination of this document, which purportedly requires state firms to purge U.S. software. The publicly available version translated here has no such clause.

Read our translation of Chinese technical documentation for generative AI that establishes very specific oversight processes that Chinese AI companies must adopt in regard to their model training data, model-generated content, and more.

Read our translation of the “About Us” page of the website of the International Science and Technology Information Center (ITIC), a government-run open-source S&T intelligence provider in Shenzhen, a tech hub in southern China.

Read our translation of guidelines, issued by a Chinese Communist Party commission, that offer non-binding principles for ethical conduct in brain-computer interface research.