Michael Kratsios Accuses China's Moonshot AI of Using Distillation to Steal Capabilities from Top American Artificial Intelligence Models
Michael Kratsios, a Science and Technology adviser to President Trump, stated that China's Moonshot AI is conducting a large-scale effort to steal the capabilities of leading U.S. artificial intelligence models. Kratsios explained that the Chinese company used a process called "distillation," where a weaker model extracts answers from a stronger one, to develop its K3 model. The administration noted that Moonshot AI likely utilized restricted, cutting-edge Nvidia servers to train its models, despite U.S. efforts to limit chip exports to China. These allegations follow a statement by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who suggested that sanctions may be applied to Chinese companies that engage in industrial-scale intellectual property theft. While the Chinese government has previously defended its AI development as a result of internal dedication and international cooperation, the U.S. government is now seeking to protect American research from being systematically undermined. The administration announced it will work more closely with domestic companies to combat these foreign campaigns to secure proprietary information.