Did Chinese AI Steal From Anthropic, and OpenAI Loses

What happened

This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts break down the White House’s accusation that Chinese-owned Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable 5 to build their much talked about Kimi K3 model. The team discusses whether this is a repeat of the DeepSeek moment and what it means for the AI race between the US and China.

And then today, White House director, Michael Kratsios, like we said at the top, basically accused Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic's models to build their own. So now a major fight is breaking out. And this isn't the first time that Anthropic has accused a Chinese lab of distilling its models. I'm curious, Brian, Leah, what you think just right at the top.

Leah Feiger: So WIRED's Hugo Lowell, the author of our Inner Loop politics newsletter has a piece that just came out this morning all about this basically, entirely about how the Trump administration is really, really split over how to handle Chinese AI.

And you have all of these competing forces, you have the Commerce Department and Howard Lutnick that are saying, "Look, this isn't as scary as you think it is. " And then you actually also have people that are like, "No, no, no, we have to create an executive order. We have to stop them from stealing American AI.

" Zoë Schiffer: The Commerce Department's main tool to try and combat this so far has been export controls. " But if Chinese labs are in fact just stealing proprietary information from AI companies in the US, that's not necessarily a failure of export controls. Leah Feiger: But it's also nothing that an executive order could stop. I'm sorry, but executive orders from the US do not apply to China.

They don't. They can be strongly worded memos with declarative intent, but no one's getting in trouble there.

Why it matters

They also get into how the US Army—and plenty of Silicon Valley companies—are having to cut back AI usage after burning through their tokens. Plus, we discuss why you should check if you have an alarm that could make your car easier to hack, and how OpenAI briefly lost control of two AI models during a security test.

You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected].

You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. ” We’re on Spotify too. Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley.

I'm Zoë Schiffer, contributing editor. Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor. Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science. Zoë Schiffer: Today on the show, we're taking a look at how Chinese AI has been leveling up in a major way.

The latest model released by Moonshot AI, one of the most well-known labs in China, has been drawing worldwide attention this past week because of the model's enormous capabilities. On Wednesday, White House director, Michael Kratsios, accused Moonshot of illegally distilling Anthropic's Fable 5 model to build their own.

We'll discuss whether we might be seeing another DeepSeek moment and what the AI race between the US and China actually means for users. Leah Feiger: We'll also get into how the US Army has been burning through their AI usage tokens and now find themselves in a position where they need to limit use. They're far from alone in having to pare back, though.

Companies like Meta and Uber are already rethinking their AI usage as well because surprise, surprise, it's really expensive to use all these models. Brian Barrett: Who would have thought? Also, on the docket for today, your car could have a hidden device that makes it more vulnerable to hacking. We're going to talk you through how to identify it and why some dealerships added it in the first place.

And later in the show, how OpenAI lost control of two of its AI models during a recent security test. Zoë Schiffer: So this past Friday, the Chinese AI lab, Moonshot AI, released their latest model called Kimi K3. And this news made major waves first because the model is super capable. It goes toe-to-toe with the leading frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

What to watch

Brian Barrett: I want to back this up a little bit, too, because I think we haven't mentioned yet that what makes Kimi K3 especially interesting I think in this context is that it's an open-weight AI system, which means it's not unlike the proprietary systems that are coming out of Anthropic, and OpenAI, and other US-based AI giants. China has adopted this more open model ...

A lot of Chinese companies have adopted this more open model where anyone can use these systems, anyone can tinker with them. " Here comes Moonshot DeepSeek before saying, "Or you could just use this for free," and it's just as good almost. Zoë Schiffer: Right. And I think the theory behind this, there's a couple different ideas about why China is doing this.