China accuses US of AI hegemonism, threatens countermeasures over Moonshot AI probe

China's Ministry of Commerce accused the United States of 'AI hegemonism' on July 27 and threatened 'all necessary measures' to protect Chinese AI firms, responding to U.S. allegations that startup Moonshot AI copied Anthropic's Claude models via model distillation. U.S. officials, including White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios, claim Moonshot used over 3.4 million fraudulent interactions to distill Claude into its Kimi K3 system, potentially leading to Entity List restrictions similar to Huawei's 2019 ban.

Via thewirechina.com China accuses US of AI hegemonism, threatens countermeasures over Moonshot AI probe Beijing's Ministry of Commerce says it will take 'all necessary measures' to protect Chinese AI firms as Washington weighs Entity List restrictions reminiscent of the Huawei playbook China’s Ministry of Commerce fired back at Washington on July 27, accusing the United States of “AI hegemonism” and warning it would take “all necessary measures” to defend its technology interests. The statement came in response to growing US pressure over allegations that Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI essentially copied the work of Anthropic, one of America’s most prominent AI companies. What actually happened The dispute centers on a technique called model distillation. US officials, including White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios, alleged that Moonshot AI used industrial-scale model distillation of Anthropic’s Claude models to build its own Kimi K3 AI system. In English: Washington believes Moonshot essentially trained its AI by feeding it outputs from Claude, absorbing the intelligence of Anthropic’s model without doing the underlying research work. The alleged operation wasn’t small. Anthropic reported over 3.4 million interactions connected to Moonshot through fraudulent accounts back in February 2026. Moonshot has denied everything, insisting that Kimi K3’s performance improvements stem from original architectural innovations rather than distillation. US officials have hinted that Moonshot could face consequences similar to what Huawei experienced starting in 2019, when the Chinese telecom giant was placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, effectively cutting it off from American chips, software, and technology partnerships. US officials have specifically noted the company allegedly used Nvidia GB300 chips in the distillation process, which would make access to advanced American semiconductors a critical vulnerability. China’s response has framed the US actions as an attempt to suppress Chinese technological advancement, positioning itself as a champion of open-source AI cooperation, particularly with developing nations. Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy https://cryptobriefing.com/editorial-policy/ .