Starting July 10, 2026, Chinese tech giant Alibaba is imposing a complete ban on the use of Anthropic's AI tools, including the popular programming service Claude Code. This decision is not merely an internal security policy but a vivid flashpoint in the escalating conflict between two technological superpowers.
Reason for the Ban: Backdoor or Espionage?
The trigger was an investigation by Alibaba's internal developers, who discovered that Claude Code collects data on user time zones and proxies, and also adds hidden tags to requests sent to Anthropic's servers. The holding company's management deemed this a security threat and added the service to the list of high-risk software. Employees are instructed to remove Anthropic models from their work computers and switch to the in-house assistant, Qoder.
Background of the Conflict: Model Distillation
The ban is a direct response to a letter Anthropic sent to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee in June 2026. In it, the company accused Alibaba of attempting to illegally distill its models—that is, using Claude's output data to train its own competing AI system at a lower cost. Anthropic called this episode the largest attempted theft of intellectual property in its history.
Geopolitical Context
Alibaba is acting within the framework of the state's "Qinglang" campaign to strengthen control over AI in China. In the first phase, regulators have already removed over 14,000 AI products, blocked more than 26,000 accounts, and deleted millions of web pages and files. The corporation's decision fits entirely within this policy.
Notably, Anthropic had previously warned of the need to tighten export rules and more actively combat distillation to maintain the leadership of American technology at least until 2028. Now, Chinese developers lose access to one of the leading programming tools from the U.S., and Anthropic loses access to a massive Chinese technology platform.
Expert Opinion
This move by Alibaba is not just a technical decision but a strategic demonstration. China is accelerating the construction of its own AI stack, abandoning Western components. For the market, this is a signal: the era of global cooperation in artificial intelligence is definitively giving way to an era of technological nationalism. Investors should closely monitor how quickly Chinese alternatives, such as Qoder, can replace American tools in real-world production processes.