Chinese military-linked researchers are trying to transfer that expensive, proprietary reasoning from Western models into smaller systems they can control and deploy locally

Chinese military-linked researchers have used outputs from advanced American AI models made by OpenAI and Anthropic to train their own systems, according to a Reuters review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents. The findings come after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised concerns about China potentially using distillation to draw capabilities from powerful US frontier AI models. Reuters found that researchers linked to China’s military and security institutions have used a technique called “model distillation” to transfer selected capabilities and reasoning from US models into smaller systems that can be controlled and deployed locally, including for defence-related applications….