On July 1st, Feng Yanghe, a top military expert in intelligent warfare in China, passed away at the age of 38 in a car accident in Beijing. Feng’s accidental death has sparked discussions on social media, with some netizens expressing concern about the insufficient protection of important talents by the authorities, and others questioning whether Feng’s death was truly accidental.
On July 11th, the Feng Yanghe Funeral Work Group issued an obituary stating, “Comrade Feng Yanghe, an outstanding member of the Communist Party of China, an excellent young scientific and technological worker and educator in our military, a recipient of the National Defense Science and Technology Excellence Youth Science Fund project, the leader of a major engineering expert group, the chief scientist of a key project, an associate professor and doctoral supervisor at the College of Systems Engineering of the National University of Defense Technology, unfortunately sacrificed on July 1st, 2023, at 2:35 a.m. in Beijing while carrying out a major mission, at the age of 38.”
The obituary did not specify the cause of Feng’s death, but on July 15th, the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence mourned Feng Yanghe in a post, explicitly stating that he “unfortunately passed away in a car accident in Beijing.”
Public records indicate that Feng Yanghe was admitted to the National University of Defense Technology at the age of 18, majoring in Command Automation Engineering. From 2011 to 2013, he pursued joint training at the Department of Statistics at Harvard University and the High-Performance Computing Laboratory at the University of Iowa in the United States, while serving as a research assistant. After obtaining his Ph.D. from the National University of Defense Technology in 2014, he remained at the university as a lecturer, then became the deputy director of the research office, an associate professor, deputy director of a provincial-level laboratory, and a doctoral supervisor.
Feng Yanghe’s research primarily focused on reinforcement learning, intelligent gaming, intelligent planning, and military chess simulation technology, achieving significant breakthroughs in command and control and intelligent decision-making. The article by the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence detailed Feng Yanghe’s contributions to China’s military intelligence.
Feng Yanghe proposed the development of the “Strongest Brain” in the military chess simulation environment, known as the “War Skull” system. The development of the “War Skull” was based on the concept of intelligent systems engineering, integrating methods such as knowledge reasoning, supervised learning, semi-supervised learning, ensemble learning, and reinforcement learning to construct intelligent decision-making models. The system was trained using high-quality data generated from human-human confrontations and machine-machine interactions, achieving close collaboration of various elements, efficient information processing, and precise and rapid decision-making. It addressed the challenges in traditional mission planning in chess simulation, such as heavy reliance on expert experience, weak ability to deal with incomplete information, and difficulties in dynamic and ad hoc adjustments.
Feng Yanghe led his team to win the championship in the “Man-Machine Contest” of the 3rd National Chess Simulation Competition in 2019 and the 4th National Chess Simulation Competition in 2020, with the intelligent agent “War Skull” achieving an undefeated record. With the more flexible tactics and intelligent decision-making of “War Skull II,” Feng won the championship in the “Machine-Machine” Intelligent Gaming Special Event of the 4th National Chess Simulation Competition in 2020.
Feng Yanghe also closely followed the forefront of technological development and led his team to successfully iterate the “War Skull” system from an intelligent gaming platform to a mission planning intelligent decision-making platform. The research results received enthusiastic responses and unanimous praise from the industry and academia.
According to the official introduction by the National University of Defense Technology, in 2021, Feng Yanghe’s team successfully applied the mission planning intelligent decision-making platform in more than ten units of the Central Military Commission, theater commands, military services, and defense industry sectors, supporting multiple major training and exercise activities of the People’s Liberation Army and promoting the ecological development of research in the field of intelligent gaming.
Specifically, the “War Skull” system developed by Feng Yanghe and his team can act as the “superbrain” for military decision-makers, coordinating and controlling various combat platforms on land, sea, and air to enhance the collaborative combat capabilities of different military services.
Feng Yanghe’s achievements and honors include being a well-known young scientist in the field of artificial intelligence and command and control, being selected for national talent programs, serving as the chief designer of the intelligent decision-making platform “War Skull,” being a recipient of the military’s young scientific and technological talent development program, receiving the Young Scientist Award from the Chinese Association for Command and Control, and winning the first prize for technological progress from the Chinese Association for Command and Control, among others.
While many netizens expressed shock and regret over Feng Yanghe’s unexpected death, they also expressed confusion about what happened while he was “carrying out a major mission” after 2 a.m. Some netizens questioned what occurred during Feng’s mission and speculated whether there were other factors contributing to this tragedy. The fact that such an important scientific researcher died in a car accident during the early hours of the morning has raised suspicions of a possible assassination.
According to online rumors, Feng Yanghe was involved in a car accident while returning home by taxi after working overtime until the early morning. Angry netizens pointed out the stark contrast between the extensive security provided to celebrities during their travels and the fact that a defense expert was alone in calling a taxi late at night, asking, “Whose fault is it, and whose face was slapped?”
Netizens also listed examples of other well-known experts who died in accidents, suggesting that Feng Yanghe’s death was “not simple.” These examples included the car accident death of academician Ma Shijun in May 1991, academician Li Bo’s car accident death in May 1998, academician Lin Peng’s car accident death in May 2007, Professor Zhong Yang’s car accident death in September 2017, and Professor Zhang Dabing’s car accident death in June 2023.
However, Feng Yanghe’s funeral ceremony has already taken place on July 15th, and the speculations of netizens are unlikely to change the official characterization of his death as an “unfortunate sacrifice.” Nevertheless, Feng Yanghe’s unexpected demise has undoubtedly raised safety concerns for Chinese experts.