White House warns of 'industrial-scale' efforts in China to rip off U.S. AI tech

the white house accused chinese entities of running "industrial-scale campaigns" to steal u.s. ai technology, specifically through a technique called "distillation" — where smaller ai models are trained by copying larger ones. michael kratsios, trump's top science advisor, said in a memo that the efforts involve tens of thousands of proxy accounts and jailbreaking methods to secretly expose proprietary information. kratsios argued the copied models won't match the originals in performance, but they let foreign actors release products that "appear to perform comparably on select benchmarks at a fraction of the cost." he also warned that distillers can strip security protocols and remove safeguards that keep models "ideologically neutral and truth-seeking." the administration plans to share intelligence with u.s. ai companies about the tactics and actors involved, and will "explore a range of measures to hold foreign actors accountable." the chinese embassy in washington did not respond to a request for comment.