Tensions Escalate as US Bluntly Labels China a Thief
The White House has openly accused China of stealing US artificial intelligence (AI) technology on a massive scale. This comes just a few weeks before the planned meeting between the leaders of the two countries.
The accusation is outlined in an official memo released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The US government claims to have evidence that foreign entities based in China are running a coordinated campaign to extract the capabilities of advanced American AI models.
“The US government has information indicating that foreign entities, particularly those based in China, are engaged in a deliberate and industrial-scale campaign to distil leading US AI systems,” wrote Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, quoted from Reuters on Friday (24/4/2026).
He stated that this practice is carried out using tens of thousands of proxy accounts to evade detection. Additionally, the perpetrators are said to employ jailbreaking techniques to unlock proprietary information from AI systems developed by American companies.
According to him, this campaign is not mere routine testing but a systematic effort to distil AI models.
This technique allows other parties to train smaller AI models using outputs from large AI models, thereby replicating advanced technological capabilities at a much lower cost.
China has rejected the accusation. The Chinese Embassy in Washington described the statement as baseless and emphasised that Beijing highly values the protection of intellectual property rights.
The memo emerges ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned visit to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing next month. This situation could shake efforts to de-escalate the technology war, which had somewhat thawed since the detente agreement in October last year.
On the other hand, the memo also reopens uncertainties regarding the export of advanced AI chips to China. The US government previously permitted the sale of Nvidia AI chips with certain conditions, but the US Secretary of Commerce stated that no shipments have been made to date.
Washington has stated it will share information with American AI companies regarding the alleged distillation practices. The government is also preparing various measures to hold foreign actors involved accountable.