The White House Is Trying to Figure Out What to Do About Chinese AI

The Trump administration is split on how to respond to China’s fast-improving AI models, with the White House pushing tougher restrictions and Commerce skeptical they will work.

Officials are weighing presidential action focused on Chinese model distillation from U.S. AI systems.

Anthropic has accused Alibaba of a major distillation attack, and the White House says Moonshot’s Kimi K3 was built using Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.

Commerce is also considering incentives for U.S. labs to build open-weight models as a counterweight to China.

The debate could shape export controls and broader U.S. AI policy amid rising concerns over security, IP theft, and system vulnerabilities.