Chinese tech giant Alibaba will impose a complete ban on its employees' use of artificial intelligence tools from Anthropic starting July 10. The decision, made amid escalating US-China competition in the AI sector, is attributed to security risks associated with the Claude Code service.
Alibaba employees are required to remove Anthropic models from their work computers and switch to the company's internal assistant, Qoder. This move is a response to issues identified by developers: Claude Code allegedly collects data on users' time zones and proxies, and adds hidden tags to requests sent to Anthropic's servers. Such behavior was deemed a potential threat to corporate security.
The conflict between the companies entered an open phase in June, when Anthropic sent a letter to the US Senate Banking Committee. It claimed that Alibaba attempted to gain unauthorized access to the capabilities of Anthropic's AI models. This episode was described as the largest known attempt at distillation — a process where the output of one model is used to train a competing AI at lower cost.
Geopolitical context and China's control campaign
Alibaba's ban is not an isolated decision. It fits into the broader state-led "Qinglang" campaign to strengthen AI control in China. In the first phase of this initiative, the internet regulator has already removed over 14,000 AI products, blocked more than 26,000 accounts, and eliminated millions of web pages and files deemed non-compliant.
Anthropic, for its part, has previously warned about the AI technology race between the US and China, calling for stricter export rules and more active measures against distillation. The company insists on the need to maintain the leadership of American technology at least until 2028.
Analyst's opinion. Alibaba's abandonment of Claude in favor of Qoder is not just a technical decision, but a clear signal that geopolitical risks are beginning to dominate technological efficiency. In the short term, Chinese developers will lose access to one of the best AI programming tools, but in the long term, this will strengthen the position of local ecosystems like Qoder and accelerate China's technological sovereignty. The market should prepare for fragmentation of the global AI landscape.