Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signaled that the US could impose sanctions on China over the theft of American AI models, marking a sharp escalation in the technology cold war between the world’s two largest economies.
What’s actually happening
Bessent has described China surpassing the US in artificial intelligence as the single biggest risk facing the country, prioritizing it above even AI safety concerns and job displacement.
White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios issued a memo accusing entities in China of running “industrial-scale campaigns” to extract capabilities from US AI systems.
A bipartisan House bill has been introduced that would sanction foreign actors involved in extracting key features from closed-source US AI models.
