Dissipative Warfare: The PLA’s Potential New Strategy in the AI Era

Executive Summary:

• For the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the AI era, dissipative warfare could be the theory that replaces attrition with a strategy focused on maintaining internal order and creating disorder in an adversary’s system.
• The strategy reflects a broader emphasis on intelligentized warfare within the PLA, prioritizing information dominance, algorithms, and systemic disruption over population, resources, or industrial capacity.
• The Chinese military likely will adopt dissipative warfare to some degree.

On September 10, the PLA Daily’s military forum published an article by Wang Ronghui (王荣辉) titled “From Attrition Warfare to Dissipative Warfare: An Analysis of the New Transformation in Winning Intelligentized Wars (从消耗战到耗散战——试析智能化战争制胜方式新变革).” [1] He had previously published “Dissipative Warfare: A Typical Form of Intelligentized Warfare (耗散战：智能化战争典型方式)” in the same outlet on May 9, 2023 (PLA Daily, May 9, 2023; September 10). Wang argues that, in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), dissipative warfare (耗散战) differs from traditional attrition warfare and that the key to victory in both strategic competition and combat lies in maintaining order within one’s own system while creating disorder within the adversary’s system. Multiple signs indicate that the People’s Liberation Army will likely adopt this concept to some degree.

A Theory of Intelligentized Conflict

Wang defines dissipative warfare as a form of intelligentized warfare under conditions of nuclear deterrence. It reduces the degree of bloodshed but intensifies political isolation, economic blockades, and diplomatic strangulation. It is enabled by the fusion of military systems to generate comprehensive combat power (综合战力), creating sudden external changes that combine material consumption, energy dissipation, and information diffusion. [2] Crucially, Wang argues, the PLA can conduct dissipative warfare in both wartime and peacetime.

Wang develops the theory of dissipative warfare by borrowing concepts from physics, including about energy consumption and disorder. He argues that to achieve victory, one must follow four fundamentals: “negative entropy infusion, threshold recognition, phase transition activation, and advantage control” (负熵灌注、阈值认定、相变触发、胜势控制). He further states that a force must build a rapid closed loop of “sensing, decision-making, action, and evaluation” (感知、决策、行动、评估) to conduct dissipative warfare. The objective is to continuously increase the adversary’s entropy in a dynamic, hybrid contest until it loses its overall operational capability.

While abstract in theory, dissipative warfare has emerged within a specific historical context, evolving out of attritional warfare. In a war of attrition, superior material and energy are the conditions for victory. The side that can better sustain the conversion of material resources into battlefield lethality and absorb greater losses will prevail. These conditions are underpinned by factors such as population, resources, and industrial capacity. In Wang’s view, recent advances in technology and AI have now displaced some of these conditions, and dissipative warfare has become central to modern conflict.

The elements of combat in dissipative warfare differ sharply from those in attrition warfare. First, the foundation of war no longer relies on competition over stockpiles of population, minerals, or industrial capacity. It instead relies on advantages in information, intelligent algorithms, network structures, and the ability to dynamically regulate energy and information flows. Second, the target of operations has shifted from destroying material entities such as soldiers, tanks, or factories to dismantling the functions and order of the adversary’s warfighting system (战争体系). Third, the measure of combat effectiveness and results has shifted from the destruction or annihilation of enemy forces to the pursuit of efficient asymmetric paralysis. This means achieving maximum disruption and dysfunction in the adversary’s system at minimal cost to one’s own side. Fourth, the center of gravity in war has moved beyond traditional contests in the physical domains of land, sea, and air, toward an integrated contest across multiple domains, including the information domain (China Brief, June 21, 2024).

In other words, Wang argues that in the era of intelligentized warfare, victory will not belong to the side with the largest stock of resources. It will belong to the side that can maintain internal order more effectively and generate greater disorder for its opponent.

PLA to Adopt Dissipative Warfare?

Three signs show the PLA likely will adopt dissipative warfare to some degree.

First, based on reporting in PLA Daily, the military leadership at least does not reject this concept and may even wish to stimulate further discussion around it. A willingness to publish two articles on this concept more than two years apart suggests that, even though no additional discussions have appeared in open sources so far, the PLA has not dismissed the idea of dissipative warfare and that space for further debate exists.

Second, compared with other PLA Daily articles on AI, the concept of dissipative warfare appears more complete. It also aligns with the PRC’s strategic development priorities. Since 2023, the PLA Daily’s military forum has published about 130 articles focused on AI, but most describe or predict only partial features of AI or its impact on military use. Very few comprehensively address AI’s implications for the core warfighting concepts. The discussion also aligns with requirements laid out in the 2020 edition of The Science of Military Strategy (战略学) regarding the strategic guidance of “military struggle in the intelligent domain” (智能领域军事斗争). These requirements emphasize paying close attention to the new changes that intelligentization brings to military affairs and providing forward-looking theoretical guidance for building the armed forces. [3]

Third, the concept’s strategic content fits the PLA’s elements of war design and operational guidance requirements. Its substance and methods do more than describe potential and value; they also align with standards in The Science of Military Strategy for “war design” (战争筹划), which emphasize identifying the features of war and making firm wartime decisions. These standards include reflecting the characteristics of informatized local wars and pursuing both clear political purposes and specific military objectives. At the same time, the concept matches the requirements of basic operational thought under operational guidance (作战指导), including asymmetric operations and system destruction campaigns aimed at striking critical nodes. [4]

Conclusion

Dissipative warfare outlines a comprehensive new strategy for the era of artificial intelligence, meeting multiple standards for the PLA’s military strategy and war design. This makes it highly likely that the PLA will adopt the concept. More than the extent to which the PLA adopts this concept or whether the military incorporates it verbatim into its internal plans, the impact of this concept should be measures by its effect on the PLA’s operational planning or campaign design. Currently, it is too early to assess this impact. But tracking the development of dissipative warfare in theory and in practice is something the United States and the international community must begin to assess, prepare for, and respond to.

Notes

[1] Wang’s current position remains unclear, but he served has previously served as an associate professor at the PLA Academy of Armored Forces Engineering and as a member of the Youth Working Committee of the Chinese Association for Command and Control (Harbin Engineering University, 2018)

[2] This framing puts Wang’s theory in the lineage of work on systems engineering and cybernetics, which have informed military theory in the PRC for decades (China Brief, September 5).

[3] Science of Military Strategy [战略学] (Beijing: National Defense University Press, 2020), p. 179.

[4] Science of Military Strategy [战略学] (Beijing: National Defense University Press, 2020), pp. 262-274.