White House Divided Over China's AI Rise

The Trump administration is divided over how to address the rapid rise of China's leading AI models. The White House advocates for stricter controls on Chinese AI, including measures to prevent distillation, which involves training models using US models. The Commerce Department, however, views these restrictions as unworkable. The rift has grown after Moonshot AI released its Kimi K3 model, which rivals top US models from Anthropic and OpenAI. Senior White House officials have discussed possible actions, especially after Anthropic accused Alibaba of the largest known distillation attack. The Commerce Department, through the Bureau of Industry and Security, oversees export controls and favors a middle-ground approach, including incentives for US labs to create open weight models. The administration also faces challenges from open weight Chinese models that lack safeguards against hacking government systems.