Lawmakers Probe Growing Use of Chinese AI Models In US Companies
3 109U.S. lawmakers are probing the growing use of Chinese AI models by American companies, citing concerns over censorship, security risks, and whether U.S. firms are turning to cheaper foreign models because domestic alternatives are too costly or restricted. The investigation is specifically looking at companies such as Cursor and Airbnb. "The growing use of Chinese AI models by U.S. companies raises serious concerns," a State Department spokesperson told CNBC. Those "AI models are designed to advance Beijing's narratives, censor dissent, and reflect CCP ideology and values." CNBC reports: The House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Select Committee on China said in April they will jointly investigate the growing adoption of Chinese-developed AI models. An initial step in the probe was for the chairmen of those committees to send letters to Cursor and Airbnb, over their "use of or exposure to these risks" through AI developed in China. "The Chinese Communist Party is no longer just nipping at our heels in artificial intelligence; it is racing to close the gap in some of the exact capabilities that will shape the future of cybersecurity," Andrew Garbarino, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, told CNBC. "Recent reporting that a Chinese open-weight model can match leading U.S. models in certain vulnerability discovery and cybersecurity tasks is highly alarming," said Garbarino.
While some government departments have banned the usage of Chinese AI models including DeepSeek, adoption of them by U.S. companies is not prohibited. Tech chiefs, including crypto company Coinbase's Brian Armstrong and AI startup Lindy's Flo Crivello, have been publicly touting the use of models from China to reduce costs. Cursor, which will be acquired by Elon Musk's SpaceX for $60 billion, built its Composer 2 model using Chinese AI model Kimi, which was developed by Moonshot AI. Alongside focusing on the rise of Chinese AI models, the ongoing joint House Committees' investigation is also looking into whether the U.S. is doing enough to tackle their rise. "The Committees are also examining whether the United States has a sufficient open-weight AI strategy to ensure American companies and cyber defenders are not forced to choose between expensive or restricted U.S. models and cheap, capable PRC-developed alternatives," a Committee aide, who asked not to be named as they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing probe, told CNBC.
[...] The administration could consider the use of federal procurement bans, which would include restricting government agencies and private companies that serve the U.S. government from using Chinese AI models, Kyle Chan, fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at think tank Brookings, told CNBC. "However, it's ultimately impossible to ban China's open-source AI models because their model weights are available freely on the internet," Chan added. "This could enter into first amendment speech issues." [...] Another [approach] could be disseminating findings about risks and vulnerabilities associated with Chinese AI models to U.S. companies. "Regardless, I do expect both the Executive Branch and Congress to communicate their interest not to see U.S. companies adopting these models," [said Daniel Remler, senior fellow, technology and national security program at think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told CNBC].
3 comments
American Open Weight Models (Score: 5, Interesting)
by bartoku ( 922448 ) on Thursday July 09, 2026 @07:48PM (#66230824)
It really seems like OpenAi, Google, Meta, and SpaceXAi would do well to release more open weight models.
Their current models are still a few months ahead of the Chinese models, so their last versions would be right on par.
It still takes a lot of expensive hardware to run the truly competitive Chinese models, as it would the on release old American models as well.
As a result you are not really going to lose much if any of your customers to those running your models locally, because if they are capable of doing that they are already looking else where.
But sadly the American frontier Ai model companies have mostly regressed in releasing open weights.
Meta has gone closed and is no longer really even talked much about.
Grok open weight releases are are behind on the promised release schedule sadly; and generally even behind in terms of their latest frontier model.
Although it will be interesting to see how the new Grok 4.5, the first model it trained with Cursor, is going to score.
The only good Capitalism is our Capitalism. (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Thursday July 09, 2026 @07:52PM (#66230830)
...whether U.S. firms are turning to cheaper foreign models because domestic alternatives are too costly or restricted.
something, something... free market.
Freedom and fake regulation (Score: 5, Insightful)
by jamienk ( 62492 ) on Thursday July 09, 2026 @11:57PM (#66231030)
US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic WANT regulation in order to block weaker players from developing competing AIs because they can't conform to the regulations. The "costs" of running AI will be the cost of having massive data centers with all kinds of anti-copyright regulations, and a proliferating list of other phony safeguards, including "safe guarding" the companies' own interests in parallel with being moral police, fear mongers, and buck-passers. Chinese and independent developers will train on pirated data and will not need data centers because they will be able to run locally. This will give them some competitive advantages - so the US companies will push to make training data, i.e, all writing and reading, be regulated – no one will be allowed to read websites unless they are logged in and ID authenticated. US AI companies will pay for access. Non-payers will be accused of violating international trade pacts, etc. Their AI models will be banned and there will be a movement to consider them criminal, selfish, etc. The main foreign policy of the US will be to get other countries to agree to license training data, and this issue will dominate US policy. When I (me, a programmer) want to program/train my own AI, it will be made illegal or at least very difficult. Right now it is difficult from a tech resource and org resource POV. But soon all the difficulty will be strictly from a regulatory POV. My access will increasingly need to be monitored and blocked.
But all of this is just a continuation of the DRM fights and the Free Software battles of the last decades. It isn't even a huge shift. It is a disgusting and short-sighted vision of our values. The worst parts of our culture and business practices have come to dominate the world.