‘China already has spies’ at US AI labs, former Anthropic researcher warns

Former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon said he was 90 per cent certain that China already had spies inside both US artificial intelligence (AI) companies, without providing evidence.

Coxon made the allegation in an interview with entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David on the PBD Podcast, arguing that China could steal advances from leading US AI labs and quickly close any technological gap.

“Right now, if we just stopped, they would try and catch up. But I think one really important thing people don’t realise is that China already has spies at OpenAI and Anthropic,” Coxon said.

“China has the ability to hack at any time. If we pull ahead, that doesn’t give us a big lead. They can just step in, steal our progress at any time and catch up.”