When it comes to AI, China is making inroads in the technology, rapidly taking shape as the next frontier in business globally and also warfare.

As reported by The New York Times, the strategic monopoly in those realms no longer belongs to the United States. In the military realm, the Pentagon has been busy bringing AI to the military at the same time that China is bringing AI to its corporate and commercial endeavors. In one example, Microsoft said that software created by that company had been able to understand speech at a human level. Chinese firm Baidu, for its part, has said it reached similar milestones earlier — in fact, years earlier.

The initiatives are tied to strategies unveiled during the Obama administration, where the “Third Offset” focuses on building and maintaining a military advantage in continued jousting with Russia and China.

The leveled playing field of technology — advanced by the microchip — has allowed some catch-up and even outpacing by those latter two countries in both of those disparate realms. Speed is the hallmark of technology firms that are planted squarely in the consumer electronics space.

NYT noted that China’s own advances in AI have led to debates within U.S. military and corporate circles centered on whether this is a case of innovation or imitation. In yet another example, China has said that it has developed a missile with what it called a “high level” of intelligence that serves as a response to a Navy missile being deployed next year that can pick its own routes toward targets.

The commercial advances in China extend to even a robot that is known as a “humanoid answering robot” that will be, eventually, admitted to universities. And Uisee Technology, staffed by former Intel and Google executives, debuted a self-driving car after nine months of work.

Separately, speed seems to be an advantage of Chinese firms, as a new supercomputer last year had become the fastest in the world, replacing a previous Chinese computer deemed the fastest.