Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Anthropic Claude Code

Alibaba Group has banned employees from using Anthropic’s Claude Code, and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers, according to two employees with knowledge of the matter. #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 Alibaba told some employees Friday that the ban is due to security concerns about Anthropic, after a recent controversy over Claude Code’s hidden code that was capable of tracking whether the user is in China and affiliated with a Chinese lab, according to the employees. Earlier this week, many Chinese-speaking users on X and other social media sites discussed Anthropic’s move and criticized the Claude developer. Even though Anthropic doesn’t offer Claude  in China due to national security reasons, many tech firms and developers in China have found ways to get around the geographical restrictions and access Anthropic’s models and coding tool. Last month, Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly using Claude models to help train the Chinese firm’s own models in a practice known as distillation. Anthropic earlier accused three other Chinese AI firms—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax—of similar large-scale distillation attacks. Alibaba has faced other challenges stemming from U.S.-China geopolitical tensions. Last month, Alibaba sued the U.S. Department of Defense, seeking removal from the Pentagon’s blacklist of Chinese companies with alleged military ties. https://techcrunch.com/20..