US executives warn of security risks from Chinese AI models as Washington weighs sanctions

The AI cold war just got a lot warmer. Top executives from Anthropic and OpenAI are sounding alarms about Chinese AI models that are rapidly catching up to, and in some cases matching, their paid US counterparts, all while carrying what they describe as serious security vulnerabilities and potential ties to Beijing’s censorship apparatus. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei used the word “dystopian” to describe where things could head if Chinese AI models continue spreading without regulation. The security gap is not subtle Models from firms like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI’s Kimi are now competitive with paid US offerings in areas like coding and cybersecurity tasks. During security testing, DeepSeek models showed a 94% success rate for jailbreaks. Compare that to US models, which have invested heavily in making their systems harder to exploit, and the gap becomes glaring. US officials are also raising concerns about intellectual property theft, alleging that some Chinese firms may have built their models using improperly acquired US technology. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on July 21 that the US would assess Chinese open-source models for potential IP theft, with sanctions on t...