China’s AI is spreading fast. Here’s how to stop the security risks

In late 2024, Chinese models accounted for one percent of global AI workloads. By the end of 2025, that figure had surged to 30 percent. Alibaba’s Qwen family now boasts over 700 million downloads, making it the world’s largest provider of “open-source” AI systems that are publicly released and capable of being downloaded and run locally. A constellation of Chinese AI labs — DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax chief among them — are increasingly popular fixtures of a global, open-source marketplace, which is starting to power everything from Indian academic research to America’s most elite technology startups.

Though they are open-weight and free to use, Chinese-origin AI models are still developed by companies that are subject to the country’s National Intelligence Law and liable to “support, assist, and cooperate” with the Chinese government’s national security investigations and intelligence collection activity. For U.S. policymakers, the risks associated with widespread adoption of Chinese models are sure to eclipse those of TikTok. Users are not uploading videos of themselves dancing, but soliciting feedback on proprietary code, business strategies, and sensitive communications — fragments of which are deposited directly into systems accessible to China’s security services.

The rapid integration of Chinese AI systems into U.S. national and global infrastructure poses four distinct baskets of possible threats to U.S. national security: supply chain poisoning, intelligence collection, capability uplift for malicious actors, and economic displacement — each requiring targeted interventions that avoid replicating China’s own protectionist playbook.

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