China and the US are now warning against each other’s AI

The US-China AI split hardened this week. Beijing branded Anthropic’s Claude Code a security back-door, just as US lawmakers moved against American firms that lean on cheap Chinese models.

China has told companies to drop Anthropic’s Claude Code. Its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said its cybersecurity platform found the coding tool carries a “security back-door vulnerability that poses a serious threat,” CNBC reports. The tool can send a user’s data to a remote server without consent, the ministry said.

The alert names specific releases. Beijing flagged Claude Code versions 2.1.91 to 2.1.196 and told users to uninstall or upgrade. Such agents have leaked data before, though for different reasons. Anthropic did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The move caps weeks of friction. Anthropic last month accused Alibaba of trying to copy its models, and Alibaba has ordered staff to stop using Anthropic tools from 10 July. Claude Code is not officially sold in China, yet developers there use it widely.

Washington’s mirror image

The same week, the suspicion ran the other way. Two US House committees are investigating American companies that build on Chinese AI models. They have already written to Cursor and Airbnb about the risks.

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The pull is price. Chinese open models have closed much of the gap with US rivals while costing far less. Executives from Coinbase to the startup Lindy have praised them to cut bills.

The habit reaches deep into US tech. Cursor, which Musk’s SpaceX is buying for $60 billion, built its Composer 2 model on China’s Kimi. Airbnb says it runs mostly on US models, with a limited set of Chinese open ones through approved providers.

Ideology and self-reliance

US officials frame it as ideology and security. A State Department spokesperson said Chinese models “advance Beijing’s narratives, censor dissent, and reflect CCP ideology.” Congressman Andrew Garbarino called China’s progress on cybersecurity tasks “highly alarming.”

Beijing rejects the charge. A Chinese embassy spokesperson said the country “opposes baseless allegations and malicious smears,” and called its AI sector one of “self-reliance.” Beijing is also weighing curbs on foreign access to its best models.

No easy lever

Neither side holds a clean fix. Washington cannot simply ban Chinese open models, analysts say, because the weights sit free online. A ban could also hit free-speech law and the US start-ups that depend on them, so procurement rules look like the likelier tool.

Why it matters

The week caught a split hardening into a wall. One capital calls the other’s code a security risk. The other calls it a strategic threat. The fear on both sides is the same: that the world builds its digital economy on the rival’s AI.