US State Dept orders global warning about alleged AI thefts by DeepSeek, other Chinese firms

iTnews AU — Apr 26, 22:33 ★★★★★

The US State Department issued a global diplomatic alert accusing DeepSeek and other Chinese AI firms of stealing model weights through distillation.

The State Department ordered posts at US diplomatic missions worldwide in April 2026 warning allies that Chinese companies are extracting proprietary models via technical distillation rather than original research. Distillation allows engineers to reverse-engineer closed models by querying them repeatedly and training new models on the outputs, bypassing licensing and export controls.

Sofia's take: Washington just called model distillation theft on global channels. Next comes the export ban and allied pressure to block DeepSeek API access. This is the opening move in AI export control 2.0.

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#DeepSeek #China #Sovereignty #Regulation

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