Representative Ro Khanna, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, sent letters Thursday to four major U.S. AI companies demanding they disclose alleged Chinese attempts to steal their proprietary model weights.
Khanna, a California Democrat, asked OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Alphabet to provide a list of all known instances over the past two years where China or hostile actors attempted to obtain model weights and intellectual property. He also requested details on the firms' cybersecurity enhancements.
Model weights are numerical parameters that store an AI system's knowledge and determine its outputs. Khanna expressed concern that their theft could erase years of U.S. research and give China immediate access to advanced AI capabilities the U.S. aims to deny them.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has previously documented Chinese efforts to obtain proprietary AI information. Michael Kratsios, the office's director, detailed in a memo that Chinese actors employ thousands of proxy accounts and jailbreaking tactics.
One method involves distillation—using outputs from a more powerful AI system to train less capable ones. The resulting systems may not match the original's performance but allow foreign actors to release seemingly comparable products at reduced cost.
Khanna's letters also raised broader concerns beyond direct model weight theft. He argued that Chinese actors could acquire valuable intellectual property and access sensitive research from American companies' systems even without obtaining full model weights.
The lawmaker emphasized that companies bear responsibility for protecting national security through cybersecurity, just as they must guard against dangerous uses of their models and AI's societal impacts.
President Trump faced criticism from within his own party last year after his administration permitted Nvidia to sell H200 chips to China during intensifying U.S.-China competition in artificial intelligence.
Neither the named AI companies nor the Chinese Embassy in Washington responded immediately to requests for comment.
