How China is ripping off cutting-edge AI from Anthropic, OpenAI and threatening US national security

Anthropic and OpenAI warn that China has been ripping off their cutting-edge AI to produce cheap, open-source chatbots — a massive, unchecked technology heist that threatens not only the US’s razor-thin lead in artificial intelligence but also its national security, according to experts.On June 24, San Francisco-based Anthropic — headed by outspoken CEO Dario Amodei — sent a letter to Congress directly accusing Alibaba of “brazen” AI theft through so-callled “distillation” — a technique where an advanced AI model is used to train a less capable one without permission and at a fraction of the cost and time.That was just months after Sam Altman’s OpenAI in February accused China-based DeepSeek of “ongoing efforts to free-ride” on its work.That same month, Google warned of surging “malicious activity” originating in China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.As The Post reported, these attacks have helped Chinese models to steal away US business customers by dangling rock-bottom prices for the increasingly costly “tokens” needed to use them.

Six of the top 10 most-used AI models were developed by Chinese tech firms, including Z.AI, Minimax and DeepSeek — all of which boast capabilities nearly as advanced as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.“If today we say China is roughly 6-9 months behind us on frontier models, we think that if they were not able to distill or they were less effective, they’d probably be closer to something like 18-plus months behind,” a source close to Anthropic told The Post.“That number of months makes a big, big difference.”Anthropic — whose powerful “Mythos” and “Fable” models were temporarily taken offline due to the White House’s concerns they could be weaponized by China — have regularly briefed Trump national security officials about distillation attacks, including as recently as this month, sources close to the company told The Post.“We have basically spoken to every part ...