Weapon or armour? The contentious debate over China’s open-weight AI

Are China’s increasingly powerful open-weight AI models a cybersecurity threat, or could restricting them ultimately make the internet less secure?

The dilemma has become a growing concern as Chinese developers including DeepSeek, Z.ai and Alibaba Group Holding – owner of the South China Morning Post – continue to challenge their American rivals by releasing models that anyone can download, modify and deploy.

The growing impact of advanced AI on global cybersecurity has also forced governments and cybersecurity agencies across the world to scramble to shore up their digital defences, with this week’s uncovering of critical vulnerabilities in the internet programming language PHP just the latest example.

Critics warn that open-weight models allow malicious actors to easily strip away safety protections and use advanced AI to launch sophisticated cyberattacks. But other researchers argue that the same technology could help proliferate the cyber defence capabilities of AI systems more widely to counter emerging threats.