Chinese military researchers tap US AI models to train defence systems

Chinese military researchers have used outputs from leading U.S. artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic AI systems to advance China's defence capabilities, according to a Reuters review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents. The findings offer a glimpse into how military and security-linked institutions in China are leveraging cutting-edge U.S. AI models as a shortcut to developing specialised systems of their own.

The documents show widespread use of a technique known as "model distillation," in which outputs from a powerful AI system are used to train smaller, specialised models that can be deployed locally without the enormous computing requirements needed to build frontier AI systems from scratch. Reuters' review, which included compiled by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, showed distillation is widely used by researchers linked to the People's Liberation Army and other military institutions. The papers suggest Chinese defence institutions see leading U.S. AI models as both a source of technical insight and a way to close the gap with American rivals.