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White House Accuses China of Industrial-Scale AI Model Distillation via Proxy Accounts

2026-04-23 07:04

OSTP Director Michael Kratsios told the Financial Times that foreign actors — primarily in China — are running "deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns" to distill US frontier AI systems, using tens of thousands of proxy accounts to evade detection and jailbreaking techniques to extract proprietary information. The White House said it will share intelligence with American AI companies to help them identify and block unauthorized distillation attempts. The disclosure comes ahead of a planned Trump–Xi meeting where technology competition is a key agenda item, and follows a January 2026 federal conviction of a former Google engineer for stealing AI trade secrets.

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