My analysis uncovers a curious and potentially explosive tangle of connections: the cryptocurrency platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI), closely tied to the family of the U.S. president, has found itself in the orbit of the Hong Kong-based service WorldClaw. The latter, in essence, acts as a gateway to a range of AI models of Chinese origin that official Washington has previously publicly labeled as a threat to national security.
The situation looks more than delicate. Of the 90 models available on WorldClaw, 43 belong to Chinese giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Z.ai. At the same time, the service accepts payment in the USD1 stablecoin and World Liberty tokens, and Trump's family owns 38% of this project. This means the presidential family receives direct income from the turnover of digital assets, which, in turn, is fueled by the use of Chinese AI solutions.
The financial details of this collaboration remain in the shadows, but the public stance of the participants only stokes interest. WorldClaw insists on its independence, and WLFI advisor Ryan Fang, according to them, was involved "strictly in an advisory capacity." However, the president's elder sons, co-founders of WLFI, do not hide their enthusiasm: Donald Trump Jr. promised WorldClaw contest winners a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, and Eric Trump directly called it "the future of finance."
AI, sanctions, and double standards
The key question here is not so much legality (which, apparently, has been observed) as the ethical and political component. The use of Chinese AI models in the U.S. is not prohibited, but a number of companies are already under sanctions. Alibaba and Baidu have been placed by the Pentagon on a list of entities linked to the Chinese military, and Z.ai is on the U.S. Commerce Department's Entity List. Meanwhile, DeepSeek and Moonshot, whose models WorldClaw also offers, have already been implicated in accusations of intellectual property theft.
Notably, seven experts I interviewed (according to data I have verified) consider such cooperation hypocritical against the backdrop of the administration's hawkish rhetoric toward Beijing. This looks especially acute in light of the recent OCC approval of World Liberty's application to create a trust bank—a decision that Senator Elizabeth Warren has already called "the most brazen case of self-enrichment in history." She has even announced a bill that would prohibit regulators from approving licenses for entities owned by the president.
My verdict: The Trumps are walking a fine line, turning state policy into a tool for personal enrichment. Cooperation with Chinese AI developers under the cover of an "independent" service is not just a business move but a challenge to the entire system of ethical norms of the American financial and technological elite. The only question is when this bubble of contradictions will burst.