Executive summary China-based artificial intelligence (AI) companies are conducting systematic extraction of proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. AI companies’ models through industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns that form the core—not merely a supplement—of their AI development strategy. While “distillation” is recognized as a legitimate and useful technique in AI research, China-based AI companies are engaging in aggressive, malicious, and targeted distillation activities at an industrial scale that extract restricted proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. frontier AI models. The National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Federal Bureau…
The Trump administration this week staked out a new position that could reshape its approach to AI policy, accusing Chinese companies of stealing U.S. technology even as it defends open AI development. Why it matters: That distinction could become the foundation for U.S. action against Chinese AI companies without broadly restricting the open-weight models that businesses, researchers and startups increasingly rely on. Driving the news: The Trump administration is backing open-weight models while accusing China's Moonshot of using distillation — the process of training a smaller AI model using the outputs of a larger model — to copy Anthropic's Fable model. - "Legitimate AI distillation used to create smaller, more efficient models…
Washington’s preoccupation with foreign influence has become almost reflexive, though curiously selective in its targets. Some lawmakers have built entire political identities around scrutinizing the […] Source
As the U.S. and China barrel ahead in their quest for AI supremacy , their race could come at the expense of global cybersecurity. Why it matters: The U.S. and China both have an interest in preventing each other from weaponizing AI tools against them or letting rogue systems into the wild. - But it remains to be seen whether they can hold a productive dialogue around AI security norms or trust the other to abide by them. Driving the news: President Trump is expected to discuss AI guardrails with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week, U.S. officials told reporters Sunday. - "We want to take this opportunity with the leaders meeting to open up a conversation and see if we should establish a channel of communication on AI…
State of the Union: China called the accusations ‘pure slander.’ The post U.S. Accuses China of ‘Industrial-Scale’ AI theft appeared first on The American Conservative .
The Financial Times reported Thursday that the White House has accused China of conducting what it calls “industrial-scale” theft of American artificial intelligence technology. Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a memo seen by the FT that “foreign entities, principally based in China, are engaged in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distil U.S. frontier AI systems,” referring to a process whereby AI scientists extract the capabilities of an existing model to create a new one. The administration will also pursue measures “to hold foreign actors accountable,” Kratsios wrote, according to the FT. The Chinese government denied the allegations, with…Open
The Trump administration on Thursday accused China-backed actors of running "deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns" to distill and copy American frontier AI models . Why it matters: The accusation pushes the U.S.-China AI rivalry into more confrontational territory — and could complicate President Trump's upcoming visit to Beijing. Driving the news: Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, sent a memo Thursday to federal agency heads accusing mostly China-based actors of using proxy accounts to evade detection and jailbreak models to "expose proprietary information" and "extract capabilities from American AI models." - Distillation attacks involve querying proprietary models, like…