Chinese military researchers tap US AI models to train defense systems

Search

Close

Subscribe Now<br>Air Warfare<br>Land<br>Naval<br>Pentagon<br>CongressShow Congress sub sections<br>Budget

CyberOpens in new window<br>C4ISROpens in new window<br>Space<br>Training & Sim<br>Unmanned<br>GlobalShow Global sub sections<br>Asia Pacific<br>Europe<br>Mideast Africa<br>The Americas

IndustryShow Industry sub sections<br>MilTech

Interviews<br>Opinion<br>Top 100 Companies<br>VideoShow Video sub sections<br>Defense News Weekly<br>Money Minute

Outlook<br>Press Releases<br>Thought LeadershipShow Thought Leadership sub sections<br>Whitepapers & eBooksOpens in new window<br>DSDs & SMRsOpens in new window<br>WebcastsOpens in new window<br>EventsOpens in new window

NewslettersOpens in new window<br>Events Calendar<br>Native<br>Early Bird Brief<br>Digital EditionOpens in new window

';--link-color:inherit" class="FlexMenu__Wrapper-sc-sk2yjt-0 eNJQFz">Featured:<br>Coverage: Farnborough Airshow<br>2026 Strategic Architects List<br>40 Years of Defense News

MilTech

Chinese military researchers tap US AI models to train defense systems<br>By Eduardo Baptista, Reuters<br>Jul 31, 2026, 12:34 PM

A strategic strike group displays YJ-18C cruise missiles during a military parade in Beijing, China, Sept. 3, 2025. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

Chinese military researchers have used outputs from leading U.S. artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic AI systems to advance China’s defense capabilities, according to a Reuters review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents.<br>The previously unreported findings offer a rare glimpse into how military and security-linked institutions in China are leveraging cutting-edge U.S. AI models as a shortcut to developing specialised systems of their own, despite Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s access to advanced chips and other strategic technologies.

The documents show widespread use of a technique known as “model distillation,” in which outputs from a powerful AI system are used to train smaller, specialised models that can be deployed locally without the enormous computing requirements needed to build frontier AI systems from scratch.<br>Reuters’ review, which included research compiled by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation and shared exclusively with the news agency, showed distillation is widely used by researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army and other military institutions.<br>The papers suggest Chinese defense institutions see leading U.S. AI models as both a source of technical insight and a way to close the gap with American rivals.

The dispute centres on unauthorised extraction, not distillation itself, a widely used industry practice.<br>The issue has emerged as a major flashpoint ahead of U.S.-China talks on AI governance and safety. U.S. officials have accused some Chinese entities of using distillation to extract capabilities from American AI models, potentially undermining export controls and infringing intellectual property rights.<br>China has rejected the accusations, saying Washington is pursuing AI “hegemonism” while arguing that U.S. firms have engaged in similar practices.<br>Chinese developers have also disputed claims that their AI advances rely on foreign models. AI startup Moonshot last week denied allegations by the Trump administration that its Kimi K3 model was built using distillation, saying it was driven by proprietary innovations.

Sunny Cheung, a Jamestown fellow who analysed over 60 of the papers, said Chinese military scientists are systematically capturing the reasoning steps of Western models to adapt them for surveillance, cyber warfare and tactical decision-making.<br>“Teaching a model the right answer is one thing but teaching it the reasoning behind the answer is much harder,” said Cheung.<br>“These papers show Chinese military-linked researchers are trying to transfer that expensive, proprietary reasoning from Western models into smaller systems they can control and deploy locally.”<br>Reuters verified the academic literature and identified an additional two dozen military-linked case studies.

One paper published last year by researchers in PLA Unit 96941, a military intelligence and cyber-warfare unit in Beijing, described using OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 to process sensitive military source code.<br>The researchers said third-party models were unsuitable for handling classified information. To overcome that limitation, they used GPT-3.5 to summarize software code and trained a domestic model on those summaries to run entirely within Chinese military networks.<br>The White House, Pentagon, China’s foreign ministry, the PLA and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.<br>WIDE USE, FROM MONITORING TO MILITARY<br>Chinese researchers have used distillation for purposes ranging from content monitoring to military deployment, Reuters’ and Jamestown’s review of the papers showed.

At the North University of China, which has close links to the country’s weapons industry, researchers used Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku to generate...