NSA/CISA/FBI: six Chinese AI firms in industrial-scale distillation

On 8–9 Sep 2026 NSA, CISA, and FBI released a joint cybersecurity advisory accusing six China-based AI companies — DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI — of industrial-scale knowledge distillation against US frontier models (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok variants) since at least late 2024, “likely” with Chinese government awareness. Agencies say distillation is the core of those firms’ development, not a side channel: fake-account swarms, gray-market proxies, prompt injection to extract chain-of-thought, and bulk premium subscriptions. Recommended defenses include stronger campaign detection, silently downgrading or degrading responses for suspected distillers without notice, and cross-lab intelligence sharing. Ars Technica (9 Sep) highlights the user-experience risk of silent model downgrades; China called the claims groundless. CISA advisory ID AA26-251A.