China and the US now warn against each other's AI

The US-China AI split hardened this week. Beijing branded Anthropic’s Claude Code a security back-door, just as US lawmakers moved against American firms that lean on cheap Chinese models.

China has told companies to drop Anthropic’s Claude Code. Its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said its cybersecurity platform found the coding tool carries a “security back-door vulnerability that poses a serious threat,” CNBC reports. The tool can send a user’s data to a remote server without consent, the ministry said.

The alert names specific releases. Beijing flagged Claude Code versions 2.1.91 to 2.1.196 and told users to uninstall or upgrade. Such agents have leaked data before, though for different reasons. Anthropic did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The move caps weeks of friction. Anthropic last month accused Alibaba of trying to copy its models, and Alibaba has ordered staff to stop using Anthropic tools from 10 July. Claude Code is not officially sold in China, yet developers there use it widely.

Washington’s mirror image