Bessent claims China's AI distillation sends back PLA plans back to US

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent once again accuses China of using industrial distillation to copy US technology and claims Chinese AI models have inadvertently sent military secrets to American AI companies.

Bessent details his concerns about China's alleged technology theft in an interview with "Axios Show" and says the Chinese models, though outperformed by the US, have achieved 80% or more of the capability of their American counterparts.

One of China's powerful models, Kimi from Moonshot AI, will sometimes say she is Claude, Bessent says, adding Kimi's distillation sent back PLA weapon plans to Anthropic which he calls "very helpful."

Considering mutual security interests, he says Beijing is likely to agree establishing an AI incident alert system that he proposed during meetings with Vice Premier He Lifeng last month.

Chinese officials have blasted these claims as groundless and pointed out distillation is a common practice in the industry for cross-model learning.