Alibaba blocks Claude Code from Anthropic: escalation of AI conflict between US and China
Chinese tech giant Alibaba has imposed a strict ban on its employees using the Claude Code tool from the American company Anthropic. This decision was a direct response to a discovered mechanism that, according to experts, could identify users from China.
Details of the ban and corporate conflict
According to available information, Alibaba's management instructed developers to switch to its own Qoder platform. The ban came within days after Claude Code features were identified in the developer community that check the user's time zone and proxy server data, as well as insert hidden markers into requests to Anthropic's servers.
An Anthropic employee explained that this feature was "an experiment launched in March" aimed at protecting against unlicensed resellers and attempts to distill the model. However, the Chinese side regarded it as a covert surveillance mechanism.
Spy scandal and distillation
The conflict has gone far beyond a technical dispute. Last month, Anthropic accused Alibaba of attempting to "distill" its Mythos Preview model. This method involves training a less powerful model on the responses of a stronger one, which, according to the American side, accelerates China's access to advanced AI technologies.
The accusations were outlined in a letter to two U.S. senators, but Alibaba has not publicly commented on them. The ban on Claude Code itself was a retaliatory move, demonstrating the growing tension in the race for leadership in the field of artificial intelligence.
Closing loopholes and shifting to domestic solutions
Anthropic is tightening restrictions for users from China. Previously, Chinese companies used VPNs, cloud platforms, and proxy servers to bypass blocks. Now the company is closing these "relay stations," citing national security concerns.
Against this backdrop, Chinese cloud and AI companies are actively transitioning to domestic open-source models such as DeepSeek, Alibaba Qwen, Moonshot, and Zhipu. Notably, at the same time, Chinese AI models are beginning to penetrate the U.S. market, causing concern among Western experts.
Expert opinion: This incident is a clear marker of the fragmentation of the global AI landscape. We are witnessing not just a technological dispute, but the formation of two isolated ecosystems. For the crypto industry, this means that in the near future, we should expect the emergence of regional blockchain solutions focused exclusively on Chinese or American standards and AI models. Investors should closely monitor this trend.