Foreign News
Chinese Military Used OpenAI, Anthropic AI to Advance Defence Research: Report
Chinese military researchers have used outputs from leading U.S. artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic AI systems aimed at strengthening China’s defence capabilities, according to a Reuters review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents.
The findings provide a rare look at how military and security-linked institutions in China are using advanced American AI models to accelerate the development of specialised domestic systems, despite U.S. efforts to restrict Beijing’s access to cutting-edge technologies.
The documents show widespread use of “model distillation”—a technique in which outputs from a powerful AI model are used to train smaller, specialised models that can operate locally without the massive computing resources required to build frontier AI systems from scratch.
Reuters’ review, which included research compiled by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, found that distillation is being widely adopted by researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and other Chinese military institutions.
Military applications
According to the reviewed papers, Chinese researchers see leading U.S. AI models as both a technical reference and a way to narrow the technology gap with the United States.
One paper published last year by researchers from PLA Unit 96941, a military intelligence and cyber warfare unit in Beijing, described using OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 to analyse military software code. The researchers then used those AI-generated summaries to train a domestic model capable of operating entirely within China’s military networks.
Other studies highlighted a broad range of military applications.
Researchers at the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology used distillation to compress an image-processing model for deployment on unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing drones to process live video and support navigation and targeting even when communications were disrupted.
Meanwhile, scientists at the Academy of Military Sciences developed a target-recognition system for simulated maritime operations involving drones, ships and unmanned submarines.
Outside direct military use, researchers at the North University of China, which has close links to the country’s defence industry, used Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku to generate synthetic training data for social media monitoring and content moderation.
Growing AI rivalry
The issue has emerged as a growing point of contention between Washington and Beijing ahead of future talks on AI governance.
U.S. officials have accused some Chinese organisations of using distillation to extract capabilities from American AI systems, potentially bypassing export controls and infringing intellectual property.
China has rejected those accusations, arguing that the United States is pursuing AI “hegemonism” and claiming American firms have also adopted similar techniques.
Experts noted that while distillation can transfer specific capabilities into smaller, locally controlled systems, it cannot fully reproduce the broad intelligence of frontier AI models.
(with inputs from Reuters)
