White House Split Over How to Handle Chinese AI Models
The Trump administration is divided on how to respond to the rapid rise of China's leading AI models, with the White House pushing for stricter controls and the Commerce Department viewing them as unworkable.
The White House is embroiled in a debate over how to answer the rapid ascent of China's top artificial intelligence models, according to multiple people familiar with internal deliberations. The division is broadly between factions within the White House advocating for tighter restrictions on Chinese AI, which may soon rival the most powerful US models, and the Commerce Department, which considers those restrictions impractical.
The latest flashpoint came after China's Moonshot AI lab released its Kimi K3 model, which competes with leading US models from Anthropic and OpenAI. Senior White House officials have discussed possible measures to prevent Chinese labs from training on US models through a practice known as distillation. The White House is expected to take presidential action after Anthropic alleged that Chinese tech giant Alibaba carried out the “largest known distillation attack” against it, though the action is unlikely to take the form of an executive order.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called covert distillation “IP theft” and warned it could lead to sanctions. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department, which oversees export controls, has emerged as an influential voice in the split. Commerce Chief Lutnick has considered creating incentives for top US labs to develop open-weight models to counterbalance China. The policy headaches have escalated with the rise of Chinese open-weight models, which lack safeguards against hacking and can be downloaded by anyone.
