China’s People’s Liberation Army Watching and Learning from the U.S.-Iran Conflict

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been watching and learning from the U.S.-Iran conflict. (Photo by Xinhua/Cheng Min)

China is studying the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran as part of a long-standing pattern of learning from American conflicts to reshape its own military strategy. Just as the 1991 Gulf War exposed the power of high-tech networked warfare and triggered decades of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) modernization, the Iran war is now being analyzed for insights into AI-driven targeting...