White House Official Accuses Moonshot AI of Stealing US AI Technology via Distillation
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, publicly accused China-based Moonshot AI of using covert large-scale distillation to steal technology from Anthropic's Fable model for its viral Kimi K3 model. Kratsios stated on X that Moonshot developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct distillation at scale, switching between access methods to avoid detection. Kimi K3 is considered the most impressive open-source AI model to date, performing at or above Anthropic and OpenAI's frontier models, which cost billions to develop. Moonshot plans to release the model's full weights for free. Kratsios emphasized that legitimate distillation is acceptable, but large-scale covert industrial distillation to steal US technology is not. This follows Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's suggestion of potential sanctions and Anthropic's earlier accusations against Moonshot AI. The incident marks a rare alignment between the Trump administration and Anthropic, which had previously faced export controls from the same administration.
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