One of the bill’s sponsors told CyberScoop it’s “incredibly expensive” for U.S. AI companies to stay ahead and distillation attacks incentivize stealing over innovation.

The company said individuals associated with Chinese company MoonshotAI were behind parts of the attack, but did not offer hard evidence for the claim.

The report details a Russian-aligned espionage campaign against more than 20 organizations, an exploit foundry run by Chinese undergraduates and ShinyHunters-affiliated breaches, among other disrupted operations.

A joint advisory alleges Chinese companies are using sophisticated systems to route millions of data requests to US AI models across different accounts and platforms.

While distillation attacks by foreign governments and companies have real national security implications, questions around who ultimately owns the data in AI systems are fraught.