China Challenges US With Low-Cost AI

Chinese AI labs have recently released low-cost generative tools and allegedly harvested outputs from Anthropic's Claude, with ByteDance unveiling Seedance 2.0 last week and claims of thousands of fake accounts used for "distillation" this week. Beijing's state AI policy targets world-leading capabilities by 2030 and favors inexpensive, widely used models, raising risks of global dependence, influence over content, and strategic dilemmas for liberal democracies.