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China-Based Artificial Intelligence Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns Against U.S. AI Companies
September 8, 2026 · CISA (US-CERT) · Severity: MEDIUM
The NSA, CISA, and FBI have released a joint advisory warning that China-based AI companies including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI have been conducting industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns against U.S. frontier AI models since at least late 2024. These companies extracted billions of tokens across millions of API requests from models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok to train their own R1, V3, Qwen, and other models, likely with Chinese government awareness. The advisory details how these companies route distillation requests through native APIs, cloud providers, and third-party aggregators to bypass restrictions and violate terms of use.
Key Takeaways
- Joint security advisory provides actionable threat information for defenders
- Recommended mitigations should be applied based on organizational risk assessment
- Stay informed as further technical details and IOCs may be released