The Thieves Who Caught the Thieves

Anthropic just exposed Chinese labs for stealing AI capabilities. There's only one problem. In May 2025, Anthropic published a remarkable document. It detailed how three Chinese AI labs — DeepSeek, Moonshot, and Minimax — had run a coordinated industrial-scale operation to steal Claude's capabilities. 16 million automated conversations. 24,000 fake accounts. Hydra networks of proxies designed to evade detection. Minimax pivoted their entire operation within 24 hours of a new Claude release to capture the latest capabilities before anyone could stop them. The language Anthropic used was unambiguous. Theft. Espionage. National security threat. Foreign adversaries closing the competitive gap through extraction rather than innovation. It is a compelling story. It is also, in a way that nobody in the AI industry seems willing to say plainly, deeply ironic. Because Anthropic built Claude on a foundation that millions of creators argue was taken without their consent or compensation. They jus