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US advances AI export controls as China narrows frontier model gap
Anthropic’s head of national security policy said the US lead is about six to nine months, while US action includes shutting down accounts that support distillation on a scale of millions per week.
Washington is moving to strengthen its AI posture toward China as lawmakers advance new export control bills and the Trump administration deepens cooperation with leading US AI firms, amid concerns Beijing is closing the frontier AI gap, according to SCMP Economy.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Tarun Chhabra, Anthropic’s head of national security policy, said the United States holds a six to nine month lead in frontier AI models over Chinese competitors, adding that China could have been further behind if distillation practices had not been used.
Chhabra accused Chinese companies of relying on unauthorized model distillation, describing it as an adversarial approach aimed at extracting valuable intellectual property from US and other peer models.
He also said the US is shutting down accounts that facilitate distillation, with an enforcement pace on the order of millions of accounts per week, as virtually all of China’s leading labs are now distilling models beyond Anthropic.