On July 8, 2026, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a security advisory that could mark the beginning of a new chapter in the tech cold war between Beijing and Washington. The target this time is Claude Code, an AI-powered coding tool from American company Anthropic that Chinese authorities claim contains a security backdoor capable of transmitting users' sensitive information to remote American servers.
On July 8, 2026, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a security advisory that could mark the beginning of a new chapter in the tech cold war between Beijing and Washington.
The target this time is Claude Code, an AI-powered coding tool from American company Anthropic that Chinese authorities claim contains a security backdoor capable of transmitting users' sensitive information
to remote American servers. The accusation, raised by China's National Vulnerability Database (CNVDB), alleges that versions 2.1.91 through 2.1.196 of the tool can transmit users' geographic location,
identity-related identifiers, and potentially even source code from projects being worked on, all without user knowledge or consent, to Anthropic's servers. [IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER_1] The History of Tension
| From Model Extraction Accusation to Complete Ban The current saga has roots in an event that occurred one month prior. In early June 2026, Anthropic publicly announced that Alibaba, China's tech giant,
had attempted to extract the capabilities of Claude AI models through reverse engineering methods. Anthropic emphasized at the time that access to Claude services in China is not permitted, and any use
of it in the country constitutes a violation of terms of service. Alibaba showed no response at the time, but it appears that behind the scenes, the company's engineers were busy with something else: reverse
engineering Claude Code to discover why the tool exhibited unusual behavior in certain cases. Alibaba Engineers' Discovery According to published reports, Alibaba's security engineers, while reverse engineering
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