Anthropic has accused Alibaba Group of orchestrating one of the largest known efforts by a Chinese company to extract capabilities from a leading U.S. artificial intelligence model, according to a letter the AI company sent to several U.S. senators and White House officials.

The letter claims that operators linked to Alibaba’s Qwen AI lab used nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to conduct 28.8 million exchanges with Anthropic’s Claude model between April and June. The activity focused on the model’s most advanced functions, including software engineering and agentic reasoning, in what Anthropic described as an attempt to replicate those capabilities at far lower cost through a process known as adversarial distillation, Bloomberg reports.

Anthropic said the campaign represented the most significant effort yet by a Chinese firm to leverage outputs from top U.S. models to accelerate its own development. The company warned that such distillation attacks are being carried out at industrial scale and that the resulting systems often lack the safety measures built into frontier U.S. models.

“These distillation attacks are carried out illicitly, systematically, and at industrial scale to harvest US Al capabilities across frontier labs and repackage them as their own without incurring the training and R&D costs required to train US frontier models,” Anthropic wrote in its letter.

Alibaba declined to comment. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to discuss specifics of the letter but stressed the need for coordinated action between government and industry to address the issue.

The practice has alarmed US developers to the point that Anthropic, OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have joined forces to share information about distillation attempts that violate their terms of service. Anthropic and OpenAI have each warned that Chinese AI startups, including DeepSeek and Minimax, have employed distillation to develop their own models. -Bloomberg

The letter arrives as U.S. policymakers consider new measures to restrict Chinese access to American AI capabilities. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-TN., and Sen. Andy Kim, D-NJ, are preparing an amendment to defense legislation that would blacklist or sanction Chinese firms found to improperly use U.S. model outputs for training competing systems. A related bipartisan bill in the House, sponsored by Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-MI, and Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-CA, is also under consideration for inclusion in the annual defense measure.

Anthropic’s letter noted that the Alibaba-linked activity continued after a White House memo in April directed agencies to crack down on large-scale exploitation of U.S. AI models through proxy accounts. The company urged the administration to take stronger steps to halt the practice, including clarifying antitrust rules to allow greater information sharing among U.S. firms and imposing penalties on entities engaged in systematic distillation.

The accusations add to existing pressure on Alibaba. Earlier this month, the Defense Department added the company to its list of Chinese firms designated as supporting the People’s Liberation Army. Alibaba has denied any military affiliation and filed a lawsuit this week seeking to overturn the designation.

The letter also comes at a moment of friction between Anthropic and the Trump administration. Less than two weeks ago, the Commerce Department imposed export controls on two of Anthropic’s newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns. Anthropic disabled access to those models for all users while it works to comply with the restrictions.

Anthropic said the Alibaba campaign fits a pattern seen in earlier efforts by other Chinese developers that the company flagged publicly earlier this year. The firm has joined OpenAI and Google in sharing information about suspected distillation attempts that violate their terms of service. Those companies have argued that the practice allows Chinese labs to acquire advanced capabilities without incurring the full research and development costs or implementing comparable safety controls.

A little over a month ago, we explained that energy traders are “Traders Puzzled As Physical Oil Prices Tumble Amid Surging Chinese Crude Sales, Plunging Imports“, and highlighted how already razor-thin independent refiner (teapot) margins had plunged to record negative as a result of the war in Iran and government policies meant to keep prices from rising.

Fast forward to today when the previously discussed dynamics have gotten progressively worse, and this morning Bloomnberg writes that China’s independent oil refiners have slashed operating rates to a nine-year lo.

Run rates at so-called teapots fell to 50.5% in the week to June 21, dropping below pandemic-era lows to the weakest since 2017, according to consultant JLC. High feedstock costs, weak domestic fuel demand, and curbs on product exports have squeezed processors’ margins, prompting them to scale back.

As we noted previously, China – the world’s largest oil importer – sharply reduced crude imports after the conflict erupted in late February as prices initially spiked, sending oil imports to a 9 year low, a key reason why oil prices did not spike even higher in the past few months.

As Bloomberg notes, the nation’s sustained slowdown in flows has brought into focus a nationwide shift away from fossil fuels that’s been driven by greater electrification.

The teapots’ downturn in run rates comes as Iran is now seeking to revive crude exports under a temporary US sanctions waiver. Still, the weak refining economics could limit any near-term rebound in their purchases.

“Teapots are not short of feedstocks, with private-sector commercial inventories in Shandong still above 2025 highs,” said Emma Li, lead China market analyst at Vortexa Ltd., referring to the coastal province where many teapots are located.

Teapot run rates slid further in the second half of June, which means July “could represent a trough before utilization begins to recover,” she said.

In a separate report, Bloomberg also notes that Asian refiners have slowed purchases of Middle Eastern crude after a buying spree over the past three weeks, with oil majors and traders stepping in to take some of the surplus barrels.

Purchases from Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) eased after three rounds of tenders, with a fourth that closes this week set to show a similar pattern, Bloomberg reported citing traders familiar with the matter. More barrels were snapped up by majors and trading houses including Shell and Mercuria.

Adnoc sold around 60 million barrels that will load over June to August across its first three tenders, most of which will flow to Asia. The offers are for grades that are loaded within the Persian Gulf, although buyers will be able to take cargoes via a ship-to-ship transfer outside of the Strait of Hormuz.

Some of the barrels being sold in the latest Adnoc tender are expected to flow toward Europe, said energy traders. That would follow a recent trend, which saw a wave of Middle Eastern oil heading in that direction as China stepped back.

Most refiners have already completed their orders for this month and next, and available crude would need to be significantly discounted to prompt any more buying, traders said. Adnoc has also asked customers with long-term contracts to immediately resume loading supplies, crimping spot demand.

Iraq and Kuwait have also been ramping up output as producers position for a reopening of Hormuz, with talks over a lasting agreement to end the Iran war showing some progress. That’s led to prices for Middle Eastern oil tumbling, with the forward curve of two of the region’s main benchmark grades — Dubai and Murban — now in a bearish contango structure.

A temporary US waiver allowing purchases of Iranian oil has added to swelling supply options, although complications surrounding the financing and insurance of cargoes remain and could be too risky for some refiners. Still, as we reported earlier this week, “Iran Oil Exports Through Hormuz Hit Wartime High,”

Some in the market are assessing whether storing crude could be an option for the impending wave of supply. Traders said freight costs remain too expensive for floating storage to be effective…

… but countries with sites on land should be able to easily accommodate surplus barrels.

The Antifa attack on the Texas ICE facility in Alvarado was a highly coordinated plan, using fireworks and a fake vandalism call to lure out ICE agents and police so that they could be shot in a hail of gunfire.  Responding Alvarado Police Department Lieutenant Thomas Gross was shot in the shoulder and the rifle round exited his neck during the crossfire, but he managed to survive.  

Members of the group tried to escape the scene, pretending to be harmless pedestrians, but were apprehended anyway.  The common excuse among those detained:  “We’re just peaceful protesters…”

Eight of the activists who were found guilty by a federal jury of terrorism-related charges earlier this year learned the details of their punishments this week.  The group’s leader, Benjamin Song, was sentenced to a century in prison. 

Song was hit with the longest prison sentence: 100 years behind bars. Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Autumn Hill was sentenced to 50 years, along with Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Meagan Morris, and Elizabeth Soto. Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.  Critics of the conviction and sentencing claim the decision is purely “political”; designed to make examples out of leftist protesters who committed “minor crimes”.

NEW: Families of the 8 convicted protestors at the Texas immigration center shooting that wounded a police officer speak out after they are sentenced to decades in prison.

Benjamin Song was convicted to 100 years in federal prison for attempted murder after opening fire and… pic.twitter.com/aC90IttcXo

— E X X ➠A L E R T S (@ExxAlerts) June 23, 2026

The obvious counter-argument is yes, they are being made into an example, and that’s a good thing.

Over 600 conservatives present at the January 6th protests were sentenced to prison for far less – Merely breaking a window or walking peacefully into the Capitol Building earned them a conviction and years of incarceration.  This action was a true case of targeted government prosecution for the sake of making a political example.  Meanwhile, Antifa and BLM protesters were given special protection.

Billions in property damage and numerous deaths later, BLM and Antifa members who were arrested used NGO funded legal resources to get out of jail quickly.  Democrat run cities never pursued charges against the majority of them.  This set a dangerous precedent; Antifa is now emboldened under the assumption that they can do anything they want and the consequences will be slim to none. 

The recent federal court decision changes all that.  At least when if come to federal facilities, they can no longer count on a two-tiered justice system to keep them safe.  

The primary enablers of far left violence (which has grown exponentially over the past decade) are global NGOs and their spinoff organizations, Democrat politicians, the progressive media and a lack of prominent symbols of punishment.  When you’re dealing with mentally unhinged zealots, the only way to make them stop is to make them afraid. 

Until recently, Antifa has had little reason to be afraid.  The system they claim to be fighting against has actually been supporting them and their insurgency from behind the curtain.  The Trump Administration is set on changing this dynamic and the Alvarado, TX group is the first in line to face a reckoning.    

Several vessels have already navigated the Strait of Hormuz utilizing a fresh evacuation framework established by the United Nations’ shipping agency, an official confirmed on Wednesday. More via newswires:

US Energy Secretary Wright says roughly 72 ships have exited Strait of Hormuz in last 24 hours.

“Ships have already begun to pass under the plan,” stated a spokesperson for the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO), though they opted not to disclose specific details regarding the transiting vessels.

According to the latest LSEG ship-tracking data Wednesday, at least two dry bulk carriers and one cargo vessel successfully crossed the strait under the new program within a 12-hour window.

An additional analysis of ship movements by Reuters, utilizing data from LSEG and MarineTraffic, indicated that at least 35 other commercial vessels – primarily dry bulk, cargo, and container ships – are gearing up to make the passage.

On Tuesday, the IMO noted that the framework is designed to clear the way for hundreds of vessels and roughly 11,000 seafarers who have been stranded in the Gulf to finally sail through Hormuz.

“This large-scale operation will be carried out in close cooperation with Iran, Oman, all other coastal States in the region, the United States and the maritime industry,” IMO secretary-general Arsenio Dominguez stated Tuesday.

“We have secured the necessary safety guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to support these operations,” he described

Notably, by and large captains and crew members have all along not abandoned their tens of millions or hundreds of millions in precious commodities/cargo – especially after already enduring the blockade for this long.

Meanwhile…

Oil tanker rates have soared since the U.S. and Iran announced the memorandum of understanding as oil importers scramble to charter vessels to pick up Persian Gulf cargoes in the hope these can transit the tentatively reopening Strait of Hormuz. 

One tanker has been provisionally booked to ship crude from the Persian Gulf to India at a rate that’s nine times the benchmark for the route, shipbrokers told Bloomberg on Wednesday.  

South Korea’s Sinokor shipping group, which before the war went on a buying and chartering spree to control about 120 very large crude carriers (VLCCs), will provide one of these supertankers for the shipment of a cargo of up to 2 million barrels from the Persian Gulf to India. The rate at which the tanker has been provisionally booked is 897% of the MEG-India benchmark route, or nine times higher than the normal freight cost, shipbrokers told Bloomberg.

The IMO ​additionally said in a note on the scheme issued Wednesday, “Vessels should wait for instructions before proceeding,”

“Crowding the waiting area will only result in the need to pause further notifications for the safety of navigation,“ it said.

A duo of leading artificial intelligence researchers at Alphabet’s Google are planning to leave for rival Anthropic, adding to a series of high-profile departures that risk undercutting the search giant’s position in AI. 

Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, both viewed internally as key contributors to Google’s Gemini AI model, are set to move to the Claude maker, Bloomberg first reported citing unnamed sources. Adler worked on the company’s AI coding effort and Pritzel was involved in the process of training artificial intelligence systems. 

The two are only the latest to take part in what is becoming a brain drain out of the search giant: the company had already lost two prominent staffers, with Nobel laureate John Jumper heading to Anthropic and star researcher Noam Shazeer going to OpenAI. Their moves rattled investors and cast new doubt on Google’s ability to compete in the fierce race to build better models.

Another researcher, Arthur Conmy, wrote on X Wednesday that he was set to join Anthropic to work on AI safety. During his time at DeepMind, Conmy was a senior research engineer who contributed to the Gemini 2.5 model as well as AI coding, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Bloomberg reported that two more Google AI employees are leaving Google for Anthropic, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel.

Not to mention these two individuals who recently left as well.

Typically this is always a sign when a company is about to release a sub-par model. This… pic.twitter.com/Gj3fHeiRYP

— Chris (@ChrissGPT) June 24, 2026

Google, an early AI pioneer, spent much of the current AI boom playing catch-up with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic before hitting its stride late last year with more capable models and chips. However, the latest defections suggest that there is internal pushback against the company’s upcoming models.

The exits highlight the rising pressure Google faces from two startups that are on the cusp of going public, offering even tenured employees at Big Tech firms the chance at a rare payday by signing on before an IPO. In at least one case, a Google departure also appeared to be preceded by shifting priorities over how to allocate precious computing resources, an issue that has prompted other employees to leave the company entirely.

Shortly before Shazeer announced his plans to join OpenAI, computing power dedicated to one of his projects was reassigned to a London-based team at Google DeepMind, Bloomberg reported. The move was made in an attempt to boost collaboration across teams and streamline Google’s work on pre-training, the initial phase of AI development in which models learn from massive datasets.

A spokesperson for Google told Bloomberg the company remains confident in its position in the market for AI talent and pointed to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis’s remarks earlier this week.

“There’s a lot of talent movement between all the leading labs and we win our fair share of the top talent. We have by far the biggest and broadest research bench of any of the labs out there,” Hassabis said at an event in Cannes. “It’s a ferociously competitive market right now, the most ferociously competitive it’s ever been in the tech industry.”

Shares of Alphabet closed down slightly after falling as much as 1.2% during the trading day Wednesday following the news.

According to the Bloomberg report, Shazeer’s career trajectory is emblematic of the intense talent wars that have defined the AI landscape. After co-authoring a seminal paper that helped catalyze the AI boom, he left Google in 2021 to found Character.AI, a chatbot startup, only to rejoin the firm in 2024 as part of an unusual licensing deal that valued his company at $2.5 billion.

Once back at Google, Shazeer co-led development of the company’s flagship Gemini AI model. Prior to his departure, he had also been working on a new AI architecture, two people said. The architecture was still based on the transformer, a technique that Shazeer and his colleagues introduced in 2017 that has become a staple of AI development in the years since, but it had been achieving promising results. Shazeer was both an admired and divisive figure within Google: his comments within Google about transgender identity and the Gaza conflict stirred controversy among some employees, bloomberg sources said.

Jumper, meanwhile, had emerged as a face of Google’s most ambitious AI efforts after winning the Nobel Prize for landmark research using AI to predict protein folding. Adler and Pritzel, both of whom are set to join Jumper at Anthropic, worked with him on that research.

Key members of Jumper’s team on the protein-folding research have exited Google DeepMind in recent months. Some have shifted to Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet spinout company working on AI-designed drugs. 

Anthropic, which both partners with Google and also competes with it, has aggressively siphoned talent from the tech giant. DeepMind engineers are nearly 11 times more likely to leave for Anthropic than the reverse, according to a 2025 industry analysis from the venture capital firm SignalFire. That appears to no longer be the case. 

Like Google, the Claude maker is exploring life sciences and healthcare applications in a bid to broaden the uses of its technology. Anthropic recently raised a new round of funding at a $965 billion valuation, overtaking OpenAI, and is considering going public as soon as this fall.

AI researchers in the UK, where DeepMind’s leadership is based, are often subject to lengthy non-compete agreements, which are enforceable under British law. Jumper would likely not begin work at Anthropic until next year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

WTI futures briefly fell below $70 a barrel for the first time since the US-Iran conflict erupted, as tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz are showing further signs of normalization and physical market tightness continues to ease.

Bloomberg noted that option markets are positioning for ongoing normalization. Put volume is exceeding calls, with some of the heaviest trading in August and September expiries between $60 and $68. The September $60 strike put is one of the most active contracts, along with August $60, $65, and $68 strike puts. This only signals that traders are positioning for more downside as the war risk premium in crude oil evaporates.

This is why:

• Asian Refiners Swamped, Brace For Over 60 Million Barrels Of Oil Ready To Exit Hormuz

Earlier today, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the audience at the Reuters Global Energy Forum that roughly 72 ships carrying about 20 million barrels of crude moved through the strait over the past 24 hours. That figure is roughly one-fifth of global daily consumption.

“I could say roughly 72 ships in the last 24 hours, and 20 million barrels of oil,” Wright told the audience in New York. “We have normal flows today.”

He noted that even if the interim peace deal between the US and Iran fails, Tehran no longer has the ability to close Hormuz, saying the Trump administration has eroded one of Iran’s key points of leverage. 

“Iran will not have the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz going forward. That’s a critical thing, that’s their key leverage, and we’re taking that leverage away from them,” he added.

We pointed this out on Tuesday morning:

• “This May Be Iran’s First Misstep – And Proof Leverage Isn’t Total”

Wright said some ships are choosing not to transit the narrow waterway due to naval mine risks, instead moving close to Iran’s coast or along the southern route near Oman with military escorts. He said that full navigation could take several more weeks.

“To return to complete normalcy takes a demining of the strait, probably a few weeks’ effort,” he said.

Tehran’s leverage will all but disappear in the coming years as Gulf producers and oil majors are set to expand a network of pipelines and export routes that bypass the Hormuz chokepoint entirely, building on existing infrastructure designed to neutralize the risk. Read the full report.

Take-Two Interactive said that its Rockstar Games studio will begin long-awaited pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI on Thursday. The action-packed game is priced at $79.99 and is scheduled to launch on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

“Launching November 19, 2026, for the PlayStation 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems for $79.99, Grand Theft Auto VI features a single-player experience set in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet,” Take-Two wrote in a press release. 

The last major GTA release was GTA V, which launched on September 17, 2013. Gamers have been waiting 13 years for a major GTA installment.

Last week, Rockstar Games gave gamers the best look yet inside the new GTA game, which has excited players worldwide. This comes after years of launch delays.

Rockstar just gave us the best look yet at non-enterable buildings in GTA VI

It’s not a straight up png like in GTA V and other open world games with skyscrapers but at the same time, it doesn’t have anywhere near the detail as the rest of the game. What I’m really curious about… https://t.co/Q5ko9Gpawz pic.twitter.com/kVQTiGZ4VR

— Farzam (@farzam_plays) June 18, 2026

Raymond James analyst Andrew Marok said the pricing for GTA VI and launch data is “broadly in line with expectations.” 

Marok’s first take:

Rockstar announced pre-order and pricing details for Grand Theft Auto VI this morning. Preorders will begin at midnight local time on June 25, with two editions of the game available. The base game will retail for $80, with the Ultimate Edition (including an exclusive collection of ingame vehicles, weapons, and skins) priced at $100.

Base game pricing in line with our expectations. Based on commentary from management around pricing to value, and making the game as accessible as possible to the broadest player segment as they can, we did not expect aggressive pricing on the base game, and $80 feels like a fair trade in that department. It is slightly above the current industry norm of $70; some publishers including Nintendo have attempted to reset the bar at $80 with varying levels of success. However, if there is one game that can price at $80 without garnering significant player pushback, Grand Theft Auto VI is that game given its massive scale and anticipation.

Ultimate edition pricing also around expectations, but “high-end”/deluxe edition absent. Rockstar announced the Ultimate Edition for $100, which includes the base game plus a collection of exclusive in-game items including vehicles, weapons, character skins, and more. The Ultimate edition is priced at only a 25% premium to the base game, which would be the lowest percentage increase on an upsell edition in the post-GTA IV era for Rockstar (though given their convention of rounding to the nearest $10 for pricing, it is the closest figure they could have gotten to without “over-pricing” the SKU – $110 would have been a 38% increase).

We may not have heard the last word on premium editions. Interestingly, Rockstar announced only two editions of GTA VI in this morning’s release. That breaks with their pattern of three different launch SKUs per title, which was true for both Gen-7+ releases (GTA V and Red Dead 2). The key difference this time is that we have not yet heard any announcements about the GTA VI Online launch. Given that we would expect that virtual currency bundles and/or GTA Online exclusive in-game items to be part of any premium edition that exists when GTA Online is confirmed, we still see the possibility that there could be another deluxe SKU announced when the gaming public receives more detail on GTA Online.

Separately, BTIG analyst Clark Lampen initiated coverage of Take-Two earlier this morning with a Buy rating and a 12-month price target of $290, explaining:

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: We’re launching coverage of Take-Two Interactive with a Buy rating and a $290 PT. Later this year, Take-Two is scheduled to release the next installment of its most important and commercially relevant global gaming franchise – Grand Theft Auto VI (11/19 release date).

We expect the title to catalyze a sustainable, multi-year improvement in earnings power for the enterprise (BTIGe $10 in average earnings power over the FY27-29 timeframe) and based on other tentpole releases from the Rockstar label, there is precedent for multiple expansion throughout the prerelease marketing cycle. In tandem, we see a path to a higher share price over the balance of the year, which underpins our Buy rating and price target.

Related:

• Is Take-Two Sandbagging Guidance Ahead Of Grand Theft Auto VI Launch?

TTWO shares were muted on Wednesday morning following the release.

For the next leg up, shares need to trade north of $250.