Trump: "Will Discuss AI with Xi Jinping During September Visit to U.S."...Will Tech Theft Controversy Be Addressed?

Following the May summit, AI emerges as a key agenda item

U.S. authorities intensify response to China’s "distillation attacks"

AP Yonhap News

U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would discuss artificial intelligence (AI) issues with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their summit scheduled for September. Attention is focused on whether he will explicitly raise the contentious issue of Chinese companies allegedly stealing AI technology from the United States.

On the 23rd (local time), President Trump attended a meeting on expanding AI data centers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and stated, "President Xi is scheduled to visit (the U.S.) on September 24," adding, "When I was in Beijing, I talked about it (AI), and I will talk about it again (at the next summit)."

President Trump further emphasized that the United States is leading the AI power race against China and will maintain that lead. He said, "Whoever wins the (AI) race will ultimately be the winner. That’s the bottom line," adding, "In AI technology, we are ahead of China by a substantial margin. We want to maintain that position." AI-related issues were also on the agenda during the summit he held in China this past May. However, the specifics of the discussions were not disclosed. At the time, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, "The two governments have agreed to conduct intergovernmental dialogue on AI."

Some anticipate that the controversy over Chinese companies allegedly stealing AI technology from major U.S. tech firms could be discussed during the summit. In a press briefing, White House spokesperson Caroline Levitt responded to a question about whether this issue would be raised at the September summit, saying, "(The summit) always covers a broad range of topics," and added, "We are certainly looking closely at the specific matters mentioned."

Regarding this issue, the U.S. government has signaled a strong response. In an interview with Fox News the previous day, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated, "If Chinese companies cross the line by covertly conducting 'distillation attacks'—unauthorized transfers or theft of intellectual property (IP) on an industry-wide scale—we will consider placing them on sanction and export control lists."

A distillation attack refers to the act of illicitly transferring knowledge from a pre-developed large-scale AI model to a newly developed smaller AI model. The U.S. government views Chinese AI models, such as the recently launched "Kimi K3" from Moonshot AI, as being created through distillation attacks on AI models developed by American big tech companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.