As the global competition for the mastery of artificial intelligence (AI) intensifies, militaries are assessing AI’s future role for the conduct of warfare. Our article analyses and compares recent Chinese and Russian (academic) debates on the impact of AI for warfare, and for the prevailing ‘paradigm of warfare’. By paradigm of warfare we mean a socially constructed conception, shared within a state or among a group of states, on the prevailing characteristics of warfare and on the nature of military power. This includes ideas concerning technologies and operational approaches, the nature of military threats, and even legitimate uses of military force. We argue that the paradigm of warfare stands on a limited number of ‘core assumptions’, which can be distilled from a manageable sample of research data. In our article we analyse and compare the core assumptions prevalent in Chinese and Russian debates, through the role of AI, and discuss whether a shared paradigm of ‘intelligent warfare’ is emerging between the states.