America Brings New Disaster, China Issues Warning

The technology war between the United States (US) and China continues to unfold. Recently, the two countries have increasingly traded accusations and suspicions regarding each other’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Most recently, a cybersecurity platform operated by China’s Ministry of Industry warned of a new ‘disaster’ originating from an AI tool made by US-based Anthropic. The platform claims to have discovered a serious ‘backdoor’ security risk in Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code.

In a statement posted on its WeChat account, the National Vulnerability Database said Claude Code contains a built-in surveillance mechanism to transmit sensitive information, including geographical location and identifiers related to user identity. This sensitive data can be transmitted to a remote server without user consent, according to Reuters on Thursday (9/7/2026). The warning applies to Claude Code versions 2.1.91 through 2.1.196.

The database advised organisations and users to immediately review affected systems and take recommended actions. Firstly, organisations and users can uninstall the affected versions. Additionally, they can update the system to the latest version, which has removed the alleged backdoor code.

The database also urged organisations to tighten external network access controls for development devices and strengthen traffic monitoring on core business networks. This is necessary to prevent unauthorised transfers of sensitive data.

Previously, Alibaba had banned its employees from using Claude Code in the workplace. The directive was announced after the Anthropic AI tool drew scrutiny for features that could help identify users linked to China, according to a Reuters report last week. Anthropic stated that the feature described as a backdoor is an experimental anti-abuse mechanism, and that access to Claude is not permitted in China.