US lawmaker asks five AI firms how they guard model weights from China

US Congressman Ro Khanna has asked five leading American AI companies to share what they know about attempts by China or other hostile actors to steal their model weights.

The letters went to the chief executives of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and SpaceX, Reuters reported .

Model weights are the numbers learned during training that make an AI model work. Anyone who holds them can run a copy of the model. Khanna also asked each firm to describe the cyber security measures it uses to prevent that kind of theft.

Moreover, the Congressman represents part of Silicon Valley and is the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China.

“The theft of such a model weight by (China) could erode America’s AI lead with the stroke of a keyboard,” he wrote, according to Reuters.

The letters follow a run of complaints from US labs about Chinese rivals. OpenAI and Anthropic have both accused Chinese firms , including Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, of distillation, meaning training their own models on the answers from US systems. However, few cases of stolen model weights are publicly known.

The companies and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

This week, Khanna also wrote to three Chinese labs: DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI. He sent a further letter to the US intelligence community. Those letters ask how they handle the risks of advanced AI.

“You cannot trust Silicon Valley tech billionaires to write the rules to keep us safe,” Khanna told Reuters.