White House Accuses China of Industrial-Scale Theft of US Frontier AI Models, Threatens Sanctions

The Trump administration has publicly accused Chinese-backed actors of running an "industrial-scale" campaign to steal the capabilities of America's most advanced AI systems, and is weighing sanctions against those responsible. In a memo released April 24, 2026, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), charged that foreign adversaries led by China are systematically "distilling" or extracting the capabilities of closed-source, U.S.-owned frontier AI models. The administration framed the activity as intellectual-property theft and said it would work with domestic AI firms on countermeasures, including potential sanctions against violators.