US Democratic Representative Ro Khanna has warned that the Chinese government may steal the "weights" of artificial intelligence models developed by major American companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Khanna, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, in a letter dated September 30 addressed to the chief executives of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and SpaceXAI, asked them to provide information on all known instances of China or other adversarial actors attempting to gain unauthorized access to model weights. He also sought an explanation of the cybersecurity measures each company is taking to prevent theft. "If hostile non-state actors steal the weights of frontier models, all of humanity could be put at risk," he said, adding that "never before has a nation's security and economic future depended so heavily on the cybersecurity of a very small number of companies." OpenAI and Anthropic have reported multiple instances of Chinese AI companies such as Moonshot and DeepSeek distilling their AI models, but there are few known cases of model weights being stolen by malicious actors.
Alphabet Inc Class CRep. Khanna's letter asks Google to disclose known attempts by China to steal AI model weights and its cybersecurity measures, a regulatory/oversight inquiry rather than a concrete business development.
Meta Platforms Inc.Meta is among the CEOs asked by Rep. Khanna to provide information on Chinese attempts to access model weights and on its cybersecurity safeguards.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Class A Common StockSpaceXAI is named among the companies receiving Khanna's letter requesting details on model-weight theft attempts and cybersecurity protections.
United StatesUnited StatesUnited States