At the center of an international technological scandal are two major American corporations — OpenAI and Google. According to reports from the Financial Times, cited by RBK-Ukraine, these companies provided access to their advanced artificial intelligence models to Chinese entities listed on the Pentagon's 'blacklist.'

The cooperation was not conducted directly with mainland China but through complex schemes involving subsidiaries of tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, registered in jurisdictions outside the PRC.

Legal loophole in export control

The main cause of the incident was a gap in US export legislation. Washington strictly regulates the supply of powerful semiconductors and chips, yet barely regulates access to cloud software outside mainland China.

Chinese parent companies are officially listed on the 1260H defense list for financing and supporting the PLA. Nevertheless, their foreign branches in Singapore and Hong Kong continued to legally purchase AI services. OpenAI and Google confirmed the provision of services, noting that they acted strictly within the legal framework, as existing geographic restrictions did not allow for a complete block of access for foreign users.

Detection of the 'distillation' scheme

The situation escalated after OpenAI cybersecurity specialists detected suspicious activity from accounts linked to Alibaba. Signs of so-called 'distillation' were identified.

This process involves using the ready-made answers and logic of an advanced American model to secretly train and improve their own competing systems. In fact, Chinese developers used API access to create copies of technologies that the US is trying to restrict.

Different protection strategies

After the scheme was discovered, the positions of American developers diverged:

  • OpenAI took a hardline stance: the company blocked access for all users associated with Alibaba and officially submitted an incident report to the US government.
  • Google limited itself to reminding users that the terms of use in Singapore and Hong Kong explicitly prohibit distillation, though it acknowledged its helplessness in the face of control evasion.
  • Anthropic chose the most uncompromising path, completely banning Chinese firms and any of their foreign structures from using their neural networks.

This precedent has increased pressure on the White House. Experts and lawmakers are demanding the immediate introduction of equally strict sanctions against advanced software, similar to those that previously blocked China's sale of modern 'hardware' and microchips.