akinbostanci/Getty Images
By Alexandra Kelley
Staff Correspondent, Nextgov/FCW
September 8, 2026 10:00 PM ET
AI & Autonomy
NSA, FBI, and CISA cite “aggressive, malicious, and targeted" distillation tactics.
akinbostanci/Getty Images
By Alexandra Kelley
Staff Correspondent, Nextgov/FCW
September 8, 2026 10:00 PM ET
AI & Autonomy

Intelligence agencies warn of China’s large-scale AI model distillation efforts

Is China Stealing American AI? Why ‘Distillation’ Has Washington Up in Arms

Six Chinese AI firms accused of aggressively copying US frontier models

US Agencies Warn China Is Systematically Extracting Frontier AI Capabilities

US security agencies accuse Chinese AI firms of intellectual property theft

US claims Chinese AI firms are carrying out ‘industrial-scale’ theft of trade secrets | CNN Politics

US claims Chinese AI companies’ core AI strategy is distilling American models

U.S. agencies say top Chinese AI companies systematically copied American models

U.S. accuses Chinese AI firms of stealing American AI model capabilities

In Depth: AI Distillation in China Leaves U.S. Tech Giants at Odds

China accused of stealing AI tech from US firms. Federal review of AI model releases by July 31 at 8% YES.

Three agencies issued a joint statement warning that Chinese companies DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI…

U.S. security agencies accused six Chinese AI companies of systematically exploiting American models to train their own systems. …

US urges AI firms to ID, then secretly switch, Chinese users to less-capable models.

The NSA, CISA and FBI say that China-based AI companies are using the distillation process against US frontier models.

CISA, NSA, and FBI accuse six Chinese AI companies of extracting billions of tokens from US models through industrial-scale…