White House Accuses China of Industrial-Scale AI Model Copying, Raising Security Concerns
The White House has accused Chinese entities of conducting large-scale campaigns to copy American artificial intelligence (AI) models. According to a memo from Michael Kratsios, the White House director of the office of science and technology policy, these campaigns involve using tens of thousands of surrogate accounts and complex tools to extract proprietary information from U.S. companies. The process at the center of these accusations is known as 'distillation,' which transfers knowledge from a large AI model to a smaller one. This technique, while common in AI training, has been allegedly used by Chinese firms like DeepSeek to mimic the capabilities of U.S. models, including those from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. The U.S. and China are in a competitive race to develop advanced AI technologies, with AI becoming a significant point of tension in their trade relations. 
