China's AI-enabled targeting doctrine assumes AI decision speed is a strategic advantage, racing past human review

PLA doctrine explicitly positions AI-enabled decision-making speed as a strategic advantage over adversaries constrained by human deliberation. China's military AI development aims for 'intelligent warfare' where AI systems compress the observe-orient-decide-act loop beyond human reaction time. This creates a strategic stability problem: if one side deploys AI targeting that acts in seconds and the adversary's response requires minutes of human review, the human-review side faces a permanent speed disadvantage. This persists because AI targeting speed is an arms race dynamic -- whichever side slows down for human oversight loses the engagement, creating pressure for all sides to minimize human involvement.