US Warns of Chinese ‘Industrial-Scale’ AI Theft, Plans Joint Response With Private Sector

YM Lee

Summary

The US government said it is strengthening its response after labeling China-based companies' AI technology theft as operating on an "industrial scale."
The White House and Anthropic said China's DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax are using tens of thousands of proxy accounts and jailbreaking techniques to extract information from US AI models.
The widening AI model cost gap between US Claude Opus 4.6 and China's DeepSeek V3.2 is contributing to the spread of low-cost models and continued attempts to steal technology.

Forecast Trend Report by Period

The US government is stepping up its response after describing attempts by Chinese companies to steal artificial intelligence technology as operating on an "industrial scale."

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said China-based companies are carrying out coordinated attacks to replicate models developed by leading US AI firms, Cointelegraph reported on April 23.

Michael Kratsios, an OSTP official, said foreign companies are extracting AI models through unauthorized means and launching lower-cost products with similar performance. The resulting models do not fully match the originals, though they can post comparable results on some benchmarks, he added.

The White House said the companies are using tens of thousands of proxy accounts and jailbreaking techniques to pull internal information from AI models. It described the activity as the systematic theft of US companies' technology and data.

Anthropic said in February that Chinese AI companies DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax generated more than 16 million interactions with its models in an attempt to extract the technology.

The White House said it plans to coordinate with private companies to share information on such attacks and strengthen defenses. It is also considering ways to hold those involved accountable.

The cost gap between AI models has also been cited as a factor behind the trend. US models such as Claude Opus 4.6 cost as much as $30 per 1 million tokens, while China's DeepSeek V3.2 costs about $0.26.