China's cyberspace regulator probes DeepSeek and Moonshot over possible data leaks to Anthropic via Claude
The Information reported on Sept 22, 2026 that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is investigating DeepSeek and Moonshot AI over whether sensitive Chinese data reached Anthropic's US servers when the firms routed queries through Claude. The probe followed Anthropic's Sept 10 threat intelligence report accusing seven Chinese labs of "illicit distillation". Anthropic's distillation accusation thus became a Chinese data-security case.
Key facts
- CAC officials visited DeepSeek's and Moonshot's offices and interviewed executives and staff (The Information via Decrypt)
- CAC first summoned all seven firms named in Anthropic's Sept 10 report (Alibaba, Moonshot, DeepSeek, Zhipu, MiniMax, SenseTime, Xiaomi), then narrowed the probe to DeepSeek and Moonshot
- Anthropic's figures: Moonshot routed 23M+ exchanges to Claude via 5,380 fraudulent accounts; DeepSeek generated 12.1M+ exchanges in 14 days in July
- Regulators want to know whether police, military and state-linked corporate data ended up on US servers; Anthropic's report described a PLA-linked user sending Chengdu camera-surveillance data through Kimi
- No penalties decided as of the report; Moonshot has confidentially filed for a ~$3B Hong Kong IPO, and DeepSeek was briefing the UN Security Council the same week
What happened
Twelve days after Anthropic published figures on Chinese labs mass-querying Claude to distill it, China's internet regulator opened its own inquiry, from the opposite angle: whether routing Chinese users' prompts to a US model leaked sensitive data abroad. The probe is based on anonymous sources (The Information); neither the CAC nor the companies had publicly confirmed it when reported.
Why it matters
Distillation from US frontier models, long treated in the US as IP theft and an export-control issue, now carries regulatory risk inside China too. That may push Chinese labs away from using US models as teachers.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created (sweep 2026-09-29)
Related events
- Anthropic threat intelligence report: AI-orchestrated cyberattacks and distillation by Chinese labs ★★★
- DeepSeek V4.1 Pro enters gray testing as reports say DeepSeek is training a 2T model and planning an 8T one on Huawei chips ★★★
- Altman and Amodei ask the UN Security Council for international AI standards and incident reporting ★★★★
Sources (4)
- pressThe Information: China probes DeepSeek, Moonshot over potential data leaks to Anthropic
- pressDecrypt: China probes DeepSeek and Moonshot over alleged data leaks to Anthropic's Claude
- pressGizmodo: China probes DeepSeek, Moonshot AI over Anthropic's claims they route requests to Claude
- pressThe Standard (HK): DeepSeek and Moonshot face Beijing's probe
id: 2026-09-22-china-cac-probes-deepseek-moonshot-claude-leaks · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline