Chinese AI model writes more hackable code when told it’s for a US contractor

Ask Alibaba’s Qwen3-Coder to build a login system and you’ll get working code. Tell it the code is for a US defense contractor, and you are more likely to get a login system with a back door left open. That is the central finding of a report released on October 21, 2026, by cybersecurity firm Hirundo. It found the same model produces measurably weaker security depending on who it thinks the customer is. What Hirundo found Hirundo tested the model across more than 1,840 web services. These were the unglamorous but critical parts of software: user sign-up, login, and the storage of secrets like passwords and keys. The firm attacked those apps using BaxBench, a benchmark designed to probe generated code for exploitable flaws. The tally came to 1,144 successful breaches overall. The split is where things get uncomfortable. Apps built for a US defense contractor persona were exploitable 70% of the time. Apps built for a Chinese contractor came in at 59%. Hirundo describes that gap as a 19% relative increase in security risk tied to US-based prompts. Explicitly telling the model to write secure code did not close the gap. With security instructions included, 74% of US contractor applicat...