Treasury chief signals sanction authority over AI theft
Michael Kratsios, President Donald Trump’s science and technology adviser, said in a post on X that the U.S. government has information that Moonshot AI “distilled” capabilities from Anthropic’s Fable AI for the development of its K3 model. Kratsios said Moonshot AI carried out the campaign through what is known as distillation — when a weaker AI model extracts answers from a stronger one.
Kratsios also accused Moonshot of gaining access to restricted cutting-edge Nvidia servers to train its models. The post did not specify how Moonshot obtained the servers.
The allegations came a day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that the U.S. would examine whether Chinese AI models have stolen capabilities from American rivals. “If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them,” Bessent said.
Moonshot’s Kimi K3 model, unveiled last week, drew global attention after the company said it is able to rival top U.S. technology. Many observers said the model appeared to narrow the gap between Western and Chinese AI.
The increased scrutiny of Chinese AI companies comes as Trump is expected to meet Xi Jinping in September. The BBC has contacted Moonshot, Anthropic, the White House and Nvidia for comment.