August 17, 2026
Test, Standardize, Restrict: A U.S. Policy for Chinese AI Models
This article was originally published in Just Security.
The release of the sprightly named Kimi K3 AI model from Chinese developer Moonshot has prompted a fresh round of debate over America’s AI policy. Kimi K3 leads a pack of Chinese AI models with sophisticated coding capabilities, open weights—published for anyone to download—low costs, and a lack of guardrails, a combination that has delighted technologists but alarmed national security officials. While Washington weighs restrictions on Chinese models, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang dismissed concerns to Axios, declaring that “open-source models that are excellent should be used.” The July 27 industry letter on open-weight models manages not to mention China at all.
Neither banning Chinese models nor ignoring their risks will serve American interests. What is needed is a response that builds the evidence base for government and industry to manage these risks, while the United States takes direct action to degrade China’s AI developers.
The most durable way to mitigate the risks of Chinese AI models and maintain America’s edge is to go on offense against China’s AI developers.
The threats these models pose to America’s national security and economy are real, as I documented in a recent report for the Center for a New American Security, and will only grow with their capabilities and adoption by businesses worldwide. The Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) has released five reports since January 2025 on various Chinese open-weight AI models, finding significant security vulnerabilities and deep ideological alignment with the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese model safeguards are consistently weak—one DeepSeek model complied with every request CAISI made for help with hacking and online scams, from hijacking webcams to running romance-investment frauds, while comparable American models refused nearly all of them. Chinese developers are building these models by smuggling U.S.-designed chips, accessing overseas data centers to skirt U.S. export controls, and distilling U.S. models. Their adoption by the Chinese military threatens American citizens, and their diffusion among American firms is displacing America’s own open-source AI developers.
Read the full article in Just Security.
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