U.S. Accuses Chinese AI Firms of Mass Trade Secret Theft
U.S. agencies accuse Chinese AI firms of industrial-scale trade secret theft, sparking new tensions in the global AI race.
POLICY WIRE — Washington, D.C. — U.S. federal agencies have accused major Chinese artificial intelligence companies of engaging in what they describe as ‘industrial-scale’ theft of American trade secrets to accelerate their own technological development.
The FBI, National Security Agency, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an advisory stating that Chinese firms are using a technique called ‘distillation’—which involves training less advanced AI models on more sophisticated ones—to extract proprietary features from U.S. AI systems. While distillation can be a legitimate research method, officials say the scale and focus of these efforts suggest deliberate intellectual property theft.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that companies involved in such activities could face sanctions, including being added to the Entity List. Meanwhile, companies like Anthropic have alleged that Chinese labs ran large-scale campaigns to siphon capabilities from their AI model, Claude, through millions of fraudulent account interactions. As the global AI competition intensifies, concerns over security and espionage continue to rise.
Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)
