The global spread of artificial intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous. No other single technology is having the pervasive impact that these systems currently exert over our lives. AI is shaping decision making, accelerating information flows, augmenting surveillance, improving intelligence gathering, changing communications, redefining data management, empowering analysis and altering social behaviours. The magnitude of this change is reflected in the investments being made in this technology. Global annual spending on AI, including enabled applications, infrastructure and related internet technology (as well as services), is currently estimated at US$235 billion, which is expected to increase to US$631 billion by 2028. As a subset of this global transformation, AI holds the potential to fundamentally redefine modern warfare.
In the face of this reality, Canada’s military is adapting. In 2024, the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) published its first ever Artificial Intelligence Strategy. While this document represents an important starting point, the rate of the ongoing AI transformation and its subsequent incorporation by militaries around the world, in various capacities, requires further critical thinking, open debate, problematization, long-term planning and creative policy options.
In this commentary, I will first familiarize the reader with the extent to which, and how, AI is becoming militarized. Second, I’ll consider both the threats posed by adversaries, and the opportunities available for collaboration with partner countries in addressing AI as a novel, emerging and disruptive technology. Third, Canada’s national AI program, industry potential and the proposed way forward by the DND/CAF will be explored to inform follow-up deliberations and possible recommendations. Finally, the potential for multinational military alliance organizations, most notably NATO, will be considered as an enabler in Canada’s response to what some consider the next revolution in military affairs.
The speed of AI development in military applications, its omnipresent nature and its profound potential consequences have ushered in an era described as an “Oppenheimer moment.” Reportedly, some 60 countries have now developed national AI strategies of some type, and another 15 are progressing toward this goal. National AI strategies are typically the driver behind military AI strategies. Worldwide estimates of military spending on AI indicate it has increased from US$4.6 billion in 2022 to US$9.2 billion in 2023, and is forecasted to reach US$38.8 billion by 2028.
A relatively short list of countries is leading the research and testing of military AI applications. Typically, China, Russia and the United States are considered the quantitative and qualitative “tier one” military AI powers. American military spending in the sector, for example, is now close to US$2 billion annually, with an additional US$1.7–3.5 billion on unmanned and autonomous systems. And expenditures on AI-enabled systems in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are estimated to be comparable. While Moscow’s investments are far lower (and difficult to accurately project), Russian legislators recently approved a 30 percent increase in military outlays for 2025. Vladimir Putin views AI as critical for reducing a growing capability gap with the West, believing that Russian security and sovereignty are vulnerable to high-tech threats. Indeed, Putin personally considers AI leadership a necessary part of retaining Moscow’s international reputation as a Great Power. In short, a comparative analysis of 25 countries across the globe indicates that the practice of militarizing AI is increasingly fluid and dynamic. Large capital outlays are redefining military-industrial complexes as small, dynamic firms and start-ups gain new ground over traditional defence behemoths and large defence-focused state-owned enterprises, particularly in countries such as France, Germany, India, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
Purportedly, this will enable more natural language interactions and improved reasoning skills, as well as adaptation to new tasks and situations.
What Exactly Is Militarized AI?
Military AI defies easy definition. For Canada’s DND/CAF, it is considered “the capability of a computer to do things that are normally associated with human cognition, such as reasoning, learning, and self-improvement.” It is a means to solve a problem, not an end in itself, and central to this idea is the ongoing evolution of associated technologies.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) Science and Technology Organization, drawing on the research of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), categorizes AI in terms of “waves.” The first of these is “knowledge-based,” which relies on rules-based decision making, facilitating automation by using expert knowledge hand-crafted by humans and a number of if-then statements to dictate their actions. The second wave builds on probabilistic methods, statistical learning and big data. The third wave aims to produce contextual adaptation and common-sense capabilities. DARPA asserts that this third-wave generation of AI will be able to understand context, leverage that contextual understanding for common-sense reasoning and adjust to changing circumstances. Purportedly, this will enable more natural language interactions and improved reasoning skills, as well as adaptation to new tasks and situations, improving real-world interaction as AI systems merge with human-level cognition. These three evolutionary waves are summarized as describe (handcrafted knowledge), categorize (statistical learning) and explain (contextual adaptation).
The Military Uses of AI
AI’s potential as a suite of technological tools enabling militaries is frequently oversold as “revolutionary,” “game-changing” and “perilous,” but the difference is almost certainly profound and still unknowable by any measure. Adherents assert that AI will improve operational efficiency, facilitate autonomy, enable more informed military decision making and increase the velocity and scale of military actions. At the root of all these domains is a qualitative improvement in the capacity, speed, efficiency, accuracy and scope of effective data management and processing.
Current military applications of AI can be broken down into eight broad categories. These categories include command and control; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance(ISR); simulation and training; automated target recognition; autonomous systems and vehicles; information operations and electronic warfare; predictive maintenance and logistics; and medical applications. Each of these in turn is briefly outlined below.
Command and control: Given AI’s capabilities to efficiently process large volumes of data, AI could improve strategic decision making by assisting with complex assessments. Applications include enhanced risk assessments, smart virtual assistants and an augmented capacity to anticipate the intent of potential adversaries.
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance: AI is further improving intelligence analysis and threat monitoring by identifying patterns in large data sets. This pattern recognition could include leveraging AI to conduct social media analysis, anomalous behaviour detection, image recognition or improving automated reasoning for intelligence. Predictive models using machine learning can identify weak signals that might significantly alter the course of military operations.
Simulation and training: When paired with virtual and augmented reality systems, AI has the potential to provide real-time adapted and customized training to individuals. Other applications include virtual wargaming and improved human performance.
Automated target recognition: AI may improve rapid detection and identification of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats (as well as other targets) through data fusion and analysis.
Autonomous systems and vehicles: The integration of AI into air, sea and weapons systems will also enhance weapons’ navigation, sensor data and surveillance. In weapons systems, AI applications can improve trajectory planning, collision avoidance or cross-cueing. AI can also be leveraged for drone swarm operations and autonomous convoy and resupply vehicles, as well as robotics.
Information operations and electronic warfare: AI may be utilized to conduct offensive and defensive cyber operations. It also aids in the analysis of intelligence data in the information space. In cybersecurity, AI can help build resilient networks and stop denial-of-service attacks. Generative AI may also be used for cognitive electronic warfare or to develop malware.
Predictive maintenance and logistics: Including AI in logistics planning will minimize equipment downtime and systems failures by analyzing the sensor data and historical maintenance records of military vehicles. It can also plot and predict the most efficient supply routes for ammunition, troops and goods.
Medical applications: Wearing equipment with AI capabilities permits real-time health monitoring and difficult diagnoses through the scanning of body temperature and heart rate, as well as electrocardiograms.
In light of the increasing number of military AI applications, an overriding concern for Canada is the effective assessment of adversarial intent and capability. As so explicitly stated by Canada’s recently retired chief of defence staff, General Wayne Eyre, “China and Russia are Canada’s main enemies, with both nations considering themselves to be at war with the west.” Russia is framed as the immediate tactical threat in Europe, whereas China is viewed as the global strategic threat facing Canada. Of the two countries, China must be prioritized given its accelerating rate of military modernization and its threat potential to the most economically vibrant region in the world, the Indo-Pacific (in which Canada has profound stakes), as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) national priority of employing non-kinetic military weapons (such as AI) to win decisive victories at the earliest possible stages of conflict, most notably with the reunification of Taiwan to the mainland.
Although the United States has had an important first-mover advantage in the field of AI, strategic competitors are mobilizing quickly to close the gap.
China’s Militarized AI Ambitions
Although the United States has had an important first-mover advantage in the field of AI, strategic competitors (read China) are mobilizing quickly to close the gap. Understanding the PRC’s motivation begins by first appreciating the key tenets of its worldview. The CCP sees the current global order as dominated by strategic competition between rival states. It considers the East and West locked in a clash of opposing ideological and economic systems. Under the existent rules-based international order (RBIO), Beijing considers itself disadvantaged and the national interests of “the Global South” more generally overlooked. Feeling increasingly encircled and besieged, the current leadership is preoccupied with augmenting China’s comprehensive national power. Science, technology and innovation are deemed determining enablers in what Beijing refers to as “the Chinese dream,” or the mainland’s national rejuvenation, and its restoration as a leader in international affairs.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has championed Science and Technology (S&T) as foundational in enabling “China’s rise” since he first assumed power in 2012. He defines the high-tech sector as the “main battlefield” of superpower rivalry and has prioritized making the PRC a global scientific and innovation leader by 2035. As evidence of this commitment, Chinese research and development (R&D) spending increased by eight percent to US$458.5 billion annually in 2023. Moreover, China has launched a US$1.4 trillion six-year plan to supplant the United States as the world’s innovation leader, with a particular focus on AI. And the country’s rate of progress has been prodigious. The authoritative technology tracker at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute indicates that the PRC now leads the world in 57 of 64 critical technologies, AI being chief among them.
Senior Chinese leadership prioritize AI as a tool, enabler or methodology as it applies to and enhances other technologies spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, biotechnology, robotics, quantum, computing, advanced materials, nuclear and cyber domains. As a military technology, AI synergizes across domains and platforms in truly novel ways, portending “asymmetric advantage.” It is not a simple enhancement of kinetic capability, but rather a transformational approach to a full spectrum of conflict scenarios.
Xi’s commitment to the ongoing and long-term modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is deemed integral to the country’s international standing and domestic stability, as well as the continued rule of the CCP. Specific benchmarks have been well documented, culminating in 2049 with the projected full transformation of the PLA into a world-class fighting force. AI advances are fundamental in each of these developmental stages.
China’s robust AI trajectory traces its origins to the early 2000s. It is now being implemented as a core aspect of the PLA’s ongoing transition from e to informatization, ultimately culminating in the intelligentization of warfare. As summarized by Jacob Stokes, “…mechanization refers to fielding modern platforms and equipment; informatization refers to linking those systems to networks such as Global Positioning System; and intelligentization refers to integrating artificial intelligence, quantum computing, big data, and other emerging technologies into the joint force.” This priority has increasingly been affirmed in official state Five-Year Plans, CCP public statements, military doctrine and a new 2021 core operational concept called “multi-domain precision warfare” (MDPW).
In simple terms, MDPW leverages C4 (command, control, communications and computers) ISR and incorporates big data and AI into what the PLA refers to as a “network information system-of-systems” to rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the operational systems of opposing forces, and then using combined joint forces to initiate strikes against identified vulnerabilities, such as networks and satellites. A review of known areas where the PLA is currently adopting AI serves as a bellwether to important trendlines.
Recognizing that gaps exist, open-source analysis has convincingly verified domains (as well as specific technologies) clearly prioritized by the Chinese military. This priority list includes autonomous vehicles (air, land and sea), intelligence analysis, information warfare, logistics, training, command and control, target recognition and ISR. Other research highlights the fields of wargaming, cyber operations, unmanned weapons (most notably drones), space, sensors, nuclear missile mobility and early warning, as well as offensive and defensive capabilities in the nuclear domain. While concerning, our proclivity to focus on the “known-knowns,” or AI applied to software, hardware and tangible systems vulnerabilities, is at the risk of what is more important — our understanding of what comes next.
Although the PLA’s escalating modernization anticipates the potential requirement for a direct military-to-military conflict with the United States and other Western countries in future, China’s preferred option is to “win without fighting” vis-à-vis strategic influence campaigns, overt and covert media manipulation, lawfare, grey zone tactics, hybrid operations and armed coercion. Cognitive warfare, fully enabled by AI, is considered the next evolution of this approach.
In its ongoing quest to secure operational advantage, China’s leadership is increasingly focused on new theories, capabilities and technologies. One such vector of particular interest is harnessing the plausible synergies between brain science, biotechnology and AI in addressing human-machine interfaces. Following increasingly centralized party direction, new pools of researchers are being directed to explore the interface between AI and human intelligence through linkages with other cutting-edge interdisciplinary technologies. “Hybrid intelligence” is proposed as a means of better coping with the complexity and acceleration of operational tempo and its associated cognitive challenges. Likewise, a focus on the cognitive domain, empowered by AI, holds the potential advantage of more effectively undermining both an adversary’s will and its resolve.
In short, the spheres of military operations are expanding from the physical and informational domains into our own human consciousness. While this new frontier evades easy definition, Chinese strategic culture accepts the risks, costs and long-term commitments necessary to pursue low-probability and high-return innovation efforts. One such indicator of this is significant ongoing internal PLA organizational reforms to experiment with how best to achieve this targeted end-state. Moreover, comprehensive “military-civilian fusion,” talent acquisition and aggressive government funding have mobilized general society, industry, academia and the military to achieve “leapfrogging” scientific breakthroughs.
Canada’s AI Response and the Canadian Armed Forces
The transformational potential of AI is increasingly noted by a growing number of Western powers. Indeed, when considering the AI revolution, Canada has been counted as a global leader in many respects. Nationally, it has prioritized the goal as moving from a “digitally aware” to a “digitally transformed” nation. That said, unlike in China, the drivers informing Canadian strategic AI approaches and investments are largely informed by commercial, societal (particularly health care) and university research objectives. The military nexus is a distant, and all too often, isolated and insulated afterthought.
Increased understanding of AI as a powerful tool that might reshape warfare has led to a growing number of countries adopting defence AI strategies to supplement national strategies, as Canada did in 2024. While our country has nurtured a dynamic and active AI innovation ecosystem, work is still needed for the CAF to be able to adopt and take full advantage of the potential AI offers. Critiques of the CAF’s ability to effectively integrate AI, for example, have identified challenge areas concerning the military’s capacity to digitally transform as rooted in its organizational structure, history and culture, more than any technological shortcomings.
From Canada’s standpoint as a middle power, keeping up with developments in the field of military AI is as much a reaction to rivals and adversaries, as an effort to remain a credible force that is interoperable with its allies. The 2024 CAF AI strategy asserts that AI is essential for the modernization of the institution, as well as war fighting. It lays out five specific “lines of effort,” including plans to integrate AI systems into the organization for both military and corporate purposes, promote organizational change to enhance AI integration, ensure ethical and trustworthy AI use, foster talent through training and recruitment, and develop partnerships with other departments and non-government stakeholders.
This strategy also broadly aligns with and supports other related initiatives. For instance, the DND/CAF Data Strategy stresses the importance of data management and analytics within the organization, a task where AI can prove useful. Likewise, the Digital Campaign Plan is the modernization plan for the CAF; it stresses the need to integrate digital technology into war fighting and corporate affairs, eventually enabling the enterprise to constantly improve itself and innovate. Moreover, the Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Special Operation Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) have all recently published guiding documents thatinclude AI considerations. The army has identified the need for AI-enhanced information management to prevent information overload for war fighters, autonomous systems and algorithm-assisted support tasks such as logistics. The RCAF stresses that it must innovate and integrate in the field of AI and machine learning at the speed of relevance. And CANSOFCOM calls for increased digitalization to shape the battlespace and assist in tasks that are outside the conventional military’s traditional mission set. In short, tangible AI advancements are rapidly becoming evident.
As noted by Engen, “there are many Canadian initiatives related to defence AI under development, and DND/CAF has solid mechanisms for funding and nurturing AI projects in partnership with academia and industry.” For example, Defence Research and Development Canada’s (DRDC’s) Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security is a competitive funding model that fosters research clusters to bring together academics, members of industry and other partners to form collaborative networks. Approximately 65–70 percent of proposals for annual grants awarded involve AI components. Likewise, another program sponsored by DND’s assistant deputy minister (policy), Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security, offers external stakeholders engagement opportunities and feedback loops on emerging defence priorities such as AI. And novel DND/CAF AI partnerships are not only national in nature; Canada has a history of AI collaboration and leadership under multinational research efforts with the Five Eyes’ Technical Collaboration Program and with NATO. Supplementing these initiatives, the national military research organizations of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States have just agreed to collaboratively pursue research, development, test and evaluation technologies focused on AI, cyber operations, resilient systems and information domain-related technologies. Such collaboration and demonstration of Canadian AI excellence may further open doors to other defence partnering, such as the Pillar II focus on the technology of AUKUS (a partnership between Australia, the United Kingdon and the United States in the Indo-Pacific).
Finally, the most convincing evidence of the DND/CAF’s embrace of AI is the reallocation of resources internally and the official stand-up of new organizations to address this requirement. In order to promote a thriving AI ecosystem where research, experimentation and collaboration coexist and result in innovative AI solutions, the DND/CAF inaugurated the Artificial Intelligence Centre on July 29, 2024. Aimed at improving alignment with allies, accelerating the adoption of AI capabilities across the defence enterprise, and implementing coherent and comprehensive AI solutions to broadly defined defence and security challenges, this new innovation office will improve operational readiness and offer guidance on critical issues related to AI implementation, such as policy, ethics, gender, procurement and training.
NATO first formally adopted a unified AI strategy in 2021 and updated it in 2024 to reflect the rapidly changing international reality.
The Ongoing Need: Augmented NATO Partnerships
Despite the successes just outlined, fully transitioning to an AI-enabled fighting force in Canada necessitates more than a national strategy and an accompanying nascent defence AI strategy; progress now requires synergizing this potential with global defence and industry partners. While the DND/CAF has established embryonic patterns of international AI collaboration, these are the product of a qualitatively different, less AI-informed era, one founded on institutional models (primarily focused on R&D) that have since significantly evolved.
NATO, for example, first formally adopted a unified AI strategy in 2021 and updated it in 2024 to reflect the rapidly changing international reality, including China’s growing S&T dominance and AI threat potential. Essential work that examines how individual NATO member states currently think about and use AI in their militaries (as well as future employment options) has now been completed, opening the door to improved partnering scenarios. Moreover, Canada already participates in key AI venues with NATO allies and other interested states. For example, the DND/CAF is a committed member of the AI Partnership for Defence established by the US Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Centre. Additionally, a growing number of linkages involve AI in the Indo-Pacific region. NATO’s evolving partnerships with the Indo-Pacific Four (Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea) further complement Canada’s recent focus on improved military-to-military ties to each of these countries. In short, a catalyst increasingly drawing nations together is shared concerns over China and AI.
Most significantly, Canada opened the North American Regional Office of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in October 2024. A technology development hub comprised of approximately 60 innovation sites across more than 20 allied nations in North America and Europe, this organization will facilitate cooperation between civilian innovators, government scientists and military operators to promote early-stage technologies addressing specific allied defence and security problems, including AI. The linking of a North American regional headquarters with its equivalent in Europe — the stand-up of an international accelerator network, test centres, rapid adoption services and trusted capital databases to help protect technology while fostering market opportunities — opens the door to Canadian leadership on promoting shared norms, standards, testing, procurement and overall military AI co-development with NATO members.
AI is now integral to almost all aspects of our daily lives; the depth of AI penetration into our lifestyles, workplaces, communications and social interactions is becoming not merely accepted, but fundamentally so common that it is less and less visible. And AI is increasingly being integrated into military affairs, including decision making, targeting, weapons development and force employment options — raising moral, ethical, legal and policy dilemmas that we will need to confront.
China’s prioritization and increasing dominance in a growing number of select military AI domains dramatically complicates, reducing the timelines available and all but eliminating the possibility of indecision, inaction and issue avoidance, as NATO’s top strategic adversary. President Xi Jinping is consumed with augmenting the PRC’s comprehensive national power; he sees returning Beijing to the position of a preeminent global power, complete with the reunification of Taiwan (by force if necessary), as integral to his personal legacy.
For Xi, the high-tech sector is the “main battlefield” in superpower rivalry. Emerging and disruptive technologies, most notably AI, will prove the defining difference. AI is more than a means to an end; it is also a force multiplier applicable to the 57 of 64 critical technologies China now globally dominates. Recognized by the Canadian government as “an increasingly disruptive global power,” the PRC’s goal of attaining the intelligentization of warfare through a new evolving operational concept demonstrates that it is not only pushing a new AI revolution in military affairs through unprecedented investments, research, and a nationally concerted campaign of military-civil fusion (aimed at securing asymmetric advantage): it is also concurrently exploring AI’s potential in new frontiers of conflict — most notably, AI-informed cognitive warfare. The risks to Canada’s national defence and security in the Indo-Pacific region are menacing, particularly as the PRC often operates outside of accepted international norms.
While striving to react to this new “threat reality” DND/CAF efforts remain embryonic in comparison, despite some progress on important fronts. This set of challenges is daunting, but surmountable. As called for in Our North Strong and Free, the government is committed to “…build[ing] a stronger defence industrial base to support a more resilient, modern, and sustainable military.” AI provides a unique constellation of interests between government, the private sector and academia for a synergizing of all stakeholders’ interests. What is now required is leadership, prioritization and direction in a framework that has been described as “a national system of innovation.”
Since the federal government first instituted and funded the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy in 2017 (renewed in 2022), Canada has fostered an AI ecosystem consisting of intersecting incubator programs, superclusters, academic institutes (the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, the Vector Institute and Alberta’s Machine Intelligence Institute), non-profit innovation hubs (Centech), world-leading federal research labs (DRDC and the National Research Council) and diverse partnerships with private sector start-ups. Further empowered by nearly 700 established AI firms across the country, and some CAD$2.8 billion in private sector investment, a network of expertise exists that national defence could better leverage as a critical part of its implementation and long-term AI planning.
Given Canada’s national and subsequent defence AI strategies, a robust country-wide AI research infrastructure and a strong public-private AI developmental ecosystem, attention should now turn to international military AI partnering opportunities (most notably with NATO countries) in order to offset costs, encourage common standards, enable shared data sets, leverage technological innovations, promote interoperability and help develop common operating pictures. The ongoing maturation of NATO’s AI strategic planning, the rapid rate of individual member states’ domestic, industrial and defence AI programs, and the novel NATO institutional approaches (including DIANA) have all positioned Canada as a potential leader in effectively addressing the AI revolution in military affairs.
As a global leader in AI, Canada must now fully integrate its national strengths in this domain, specifically to the defence enterprise. These assets must then be synergized, integrated and amplified by international AI partnerships. The PRC’s mounting AI threat potential leaves Canada with no other option. In protecting Canadian interests, values and stake in the continuance of a RBIO, AI is a test case for developing a new approach to a defence industrial base that prioritizes innovation, research excellence and pan-Canadian expertise and unites public-private collaboration in common cause — the defence of our country and the well-being of all citizens — with other like-minded Western nations.
