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

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, multi-domain operations, and real-time intelligence integration. China Military Bugle, a PLA-affiliated outlet, published five lessons from the war for domestic military audiences, an unusual public statement that serves simultaneously as a critique of the U.S., a warning against complacency within PLA…