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Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: Zhong Shaojun's Removal Breaches Xi's Innermost Circle
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary:
* * *
Zhong Shaojun's Removal Breaches Xi's Innermost Circle
09.14.2026 | Christopher Nye
Executive Summary:
* Zhong Shaojun, who served as Xi Jinping's secretary for over 20 years, was purged on August 28. Assigned to Xi in 2002, he rose to help lead the Central Military Commission General Office in 2013, a crucial role in the People's Liberation Army, despite having no military background.
* Zhong's purge follows a demotion in 2024 in which he was transferred to the post of political commissar of the National ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary: * * * Zhong Shaojun's Removal Breaches Xi's Innermost Circle 09.14.2026 | Christopher Nye Executive Summary: * Zhong Shaojun, who served as Xi Jinping's secretary for over 20 years, was purged on August 28. Assigned to Xi in 2002, he rose to help lead the Central Military Commission General Office in 2013, a crucial role in the People's Liberation Army, despite having no military background. * Zhong's purge follows a demotion in 2024 in which he was transferred to the post of political commissar of the NationalDefense University and signals Xi's determination to purge even lifelong friends and personal retainers--individuals his rectification campaign had yet to touch.
* Rectification within the armed forces will continue, but each successive wave of purges will yield less shock than the last and leave Xi dependent on further removals to sustain his authority.
-
On August 28, the National People's Congress Standing Committee announced the removal of 12 individuals from their positions as deputies to the congress. [1] Among them were generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, who were simultaneously removed from their posts on the state Central Military Commission (CMC) (Xinhua, August 28, [a], [b]). Beyond the attention paid to Zhang and Liu, the list also included Zhong Shaojun, a key figure who received comparatively little notice.
Zhong once directed the CMC General Office. More significantly, he served as Chinese leader Xi Jinping's personal secretary starting in 2002, later serving as his military secretary. Since Deng Xiaoping, every Chinese Communist Party "core" leader has installed his most trusted aide inside the army to serve as overseer (China Brief, July 21, 2025). Each of those aides made it to retirement intact. Zhong is the first to fall.
Xi's Foremost Personal Retainer
Zhong's rise began with Xi's personal affairs. Born in 1968, he studied at Hangzhou University, then worked without distinction in Zhejiang provincial bureaucracy until 2002 when, at 34, he was assigned as personal secretary to the province's newly arrived Party chief, Xi Jinping, responsible for arranging the leader's daily life (Resoundnews, October 26, 2025; VOA, August 29). When Xi moved to Shanghai in early 2007, Zhong was the only one he took, and that October he followed Xi to Zhongnanhai (Waican, May 24, 2013).
In 2013, freshly in power, Xi put Zhong into the CMC General Office as deputy director and head of the Chairman's Office, granting him the rank of senior colonel despite him having no prior military service (New York Times, September 30, 2015; China Brief, March 7, 2016). He was promoted rapidly, rising to the rank of major general in 2016, director of the General Office in 2017, and lieutenant general in 2019 (Asia Society, October 3, 2024). As head of the CMC General Office, a key functional organ responsible for coordinating and supporting the CMC's work, Zhong held a pivotal post. Only two men had filled the same overseer role before Zhong: Wang Ruilin, Deng Xiaoping's secretary from 1952, and Jia Ting'an, a civilian who became Jiang Zemin's secretary in 1982 (SCMP, January 4, 2004, December 9, 2018).
Zhong's Professional Failures Likely Caused Downfall
Zhong's purge caps a decade of military rectification that has worked its way from the outer edge to the innermost core. This process has unfolded in five stages. First were the rivals, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, who had controlled the military before Xi's ascension. Then came the inherited officials who capitulated--Zhang Yang and Fang Fenghui , two holdovers from the Hu Jintao era who switched allegiance to Xi, only to be purged in late 2017 (Xinhua, November 28, 2017; Ministry of National Defense [MND], January 9, 2018). Next were Xi's own appointees, Miao Hua and He Weidong, expelled from the Party and the military in October 2025 (MND, October 17, 2025). Then came Zhang Youxia, a lifelong family acquaintance of Xi's (SCMP, October 24, 2017; Xinhua, January 24; China Brief, January 26).
Zhong appears to be the first member of Xi's inner circle targeted in the purge. He left the General Office in 2024, initially disappearing with no public announcement (China Brief, May 24, 2024). He resurfaced as the political commissar of the National Defense University--a sidelining that stopped well short of detention--but remained involved in some public functions associated with his previous role. When Singapore's permanent secretary for defense visited Beijing in August 2025, its defense ministry listed Zhong Shaojun among the officials he met (MINDEF Singapore, August 18, 2025). Beijing's readout of that meeting omitted him entirely (MND, August 19, 2025). Two months later, domestic media named Xia Zhihe as Zhong's replacement in the post (Caixin, October 26, 2025).
Two explanations are commonly offered for Zhong's downfall. The first is corruption, which is the consistent official narrative behind these moves, and Zhong almost certainly took money, as is typical at his rank. Graft alone almost never ends a senior official's career, however, and so the corruption charge is largely uninformative--investigative journalists have spent over a decade documenting the fortunes of the Party elite, Xi's family included (Bloomberg, June 29, 2012).
The second explanation is incompetence. It is possible that Zhong failed in his duties overseeing the military, allowing personnel problems to persist even at the top of the CMC, for instance by either missing or tolerating the networks that Miao Hua and He Weidong built inside the high command. A transfer to the NDU is a typical solution within the system for handling such a failure: Zhong likely retained Xi's protection, allowing the leader to save face by halting the accusations against him. In this way, Zhong's treatment reflected that of Jia Ting'an, who drew accusations for years but nevertheless kept his rank (FRI, December 1, 2015). Now, however, Zhong has lost everything, signaling that Xi himself finally chose to cut him loose.
Rectification Continues
Zhong's removal alleviates the diminishing returns to terror. When the Party could still buy loyalty with institutional resources, purges could remain surgical and rare. With those incentives dwindling, fear must do the heavy lifting, even as each wave of purges yields less shock than the last. The fatal flaw in purges is exempting the inner circle, since the men who share the leader's table then operate with impunity in plain sight. Xi has eliminated that sanctuary, finally sacrificing a 20-year retainer who possessed no power base of his own.
Xi will be unable to halt the decay, however, and can rely on little other than continuous rectification--"self-revolution"--to enforce military obedience (Xinhua, November 30, 2025). Shockwaves from Zhang Youxia's investigation have largely dissipated, and an August 24 call for reports of irregular purchasing within the Rocket Force signals no letup in the PLA's anticorruption drive (Military Procurement Network, August 24).
The purge nevertheless remains selective. Proximity to Xi retains its value, determining not only who falls first, but how harshly each case is settled. Toward officials on the outer rings, Xi has shown almost no mercy. Two successive defense ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, lacked personal ties to him and each received a suspended death sentence with commutation restricted, the heaviest penalty currently applied at subnational rank or above (Foreign Policy, May 22). Qin Gang, the former foreign minister who spent years in close attendance on Xi, was only stripped of his posts without criminal prosecution (Washington Post, September 8, 2024). Which of these paths Zhong's case follows remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Zhong Shaojun's removal shows how little remains of the means by which Xi once held his elite together. A leader who can no longer offer material rewards to his officials and who no longer shares a common project with them has only fear to work with. Keeping fear at the same level requires sustaining the scale of the purge, and bringing down men close to him from time to time, though the supply of such men is finite.
* * *
Christopher Nye is a Non-Resident Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He previously served as a Professor and directed a university think tank in China. He holds a Ph.D. in Law and specializes in Chinese legal institutions, elite politics, U.S.-China technology competition, and local governance.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/zhong-shaojuns-removal-breaches-xis-innermost-circle/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Zhong Shaojun's Removal Breaches Xi's Innermost Circle
09.14.2026 | Christopher Nye
Executive Summary:
* Zhong Shaojun, who served as Xi Jinping's secretary for over 20 years, was purged on August 28. Assigned to Xi in 2002, he rose to help lead the Central Military Commission General Office in 2013, a crucial role in the People's Liberation Army, despite having no military background.
* Zhong's purge follows a demotion in 2024 in which he was transferred to the post of political commissar of the National ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary: * * * Zhong Shaojun's Removal Breaches Xi's Innermost Circle 09.14.2026 | Christopher Nye Executive Summary: * Zhong Shaojun, who served as Xi Jinping's secretary for over 20 years, was purged on August 28. Assigned to Xi in 2002, he rose to help lead the Central Military Commission General Office in 2013, a crucial role in the People's Liberation Army, despite having no military background. * Zhong's purge follows a demotion in 2024 in which he was transferred to the post of political commissar of the NationalDefense University and signals Xi's determination to purge even lifelong friends and personal retainers--individuals his rectification campaign had yet to touch.
* Rectification within the armed forces will continue, but each successive wave of purges will yield less shock than the last and leave Xi dependent on further removals to sustain his authority.
-
On August 28, the National People's Congress Standing Committee announced the removal of 12 individuals from their positions as deputies to the congress. [1] Among them were generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, who were simultaneously removed from their posts on the state Central Military Commission (CMC) (Xinhua, August 28, [a], [b]). Beyond the attention paid to Zhang and Liu, the list also included Zhong Shaojun, a key figure who received comparatively little notice.
Zhong once directed the CMC General Office. More significantly, he served as Chinese leader Xi Jinping's personal secretary starting in 2002, later serving as his military secretary. Since Deng Xiaoping, every Chinese Communist Party "core" leader has installed his most trusted aide inside the army to serve as overseer (China Brief, July 21, 2025). Each of those aides made it to retirement intact. Zhong is the first to fall.
Xi's Foremost Personal Retainer
Zhong's rise began with Xi's personal affairs. Born in 1968, he studied at Hangzhou University, then worked without distinction in Zhejiang provincial bureaucracy until 2002 when, at 34, he was assigned as personal secretary to the province's newly arrived Party chief, Xi Jinping, responsible for arranging the leader's daily life (Resoundnews, October 26, 2025; VOA, August 29). When Xi moved to Shanghai in early 2007, Zhong was the only one he took, and that October he followed Xi to Zhongnanhai (Waican, May 24, 2013).
In 2013, freshly in power, Xi put Zhong into the CMC General Office as deputy director and head of the Chairman's Office, granting him the rank of senior colonel despite him having no prior military service (New York Times, September 30, 2015; China Brief, March 7, 2016). He was promoted rapidly, rising to the rank of major general in 2016, director of the General Office in 2017, and lieutenant general in 2019 (Asia Society, October 3, 2024). As head of the CMC General Office, a key functional organ responsible for coordinating and supporting the CMC's work, Zhong held a pivotal post. Only two men had filled the same overseer role before Zhong: Wang Ruilin, Deng Xiaoping's secretary from 1952, and Jia Ting'an, a civilian who became Jiang Zemin's secretary in 1982 (SCMP, January 4, 2004, December 9, 2018).
Zhong's Professional Failures Likely Caused Downfall
Zhong's purge caps a decade of military rectification that has worked its way from the outer edge to the innermost core. This process has unfolded in five stages. First were the rivals, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, who had controlled the military before Xi's ascension. Then came the inherited officials who capitulated--Zhang Yang and Fang Fenghui , two holdovers from the Hu Jintao era who switched allegiance to Xi, only to be purged in late 2017 (Xinhua, November 28, 2017; Ministry of National Defense [MND], January 9, 2018). Next were Xi's own appointees, Miao Hua and He Weidong, expelled from the Party and the military in October 2025 (MND, October 17, 2025). Then came Zhang Youxia, a lifelong family acquaintance of Xi's (SCMP, October 24, 2017; Xinhua, January 24; China Brief, January 26).
Zhong appears to be the first member of Xi's inner circle targeted in the purge. He left the General Office in 2024, initially disappearing with no public announcement (China Brief, May 24, 2024). He resurfaced as the political commissar of the National Defense University--a sidelining that stopped well short of detention--but remained involved in some public functions associated with his previous role. When Singapore's permanent secretary for defense visited Beijing in August 2025, its defense ministry listed Zhong Shaojun among the officials he met (MINDEF Singapore, August 18, 2025). Beijing's readout of that meeting omitted him entirely (MND, August 19, 2025). Two months later, domestic media named Xia Zhihe as Zhong's replacement in the post (Caixin, October 26, 2025).
Two explanations are commonly offered for Zhong's downfall. The first is corruption, which is the consistent official narrative behind these moves, and Zhong almost certainly took money, as is typical at his rank. Graft alone almost never ends a senior official's career, however, and so the corruption charge is largely uninformative--investigative journalists have spent over a decade documenting the fortunes of the Party elite, Xi's family included (Bloomberg, June 29, 2012).
The second explanation is incompetence. It is possible that Zhong failed in his duties overseeing the military, allowing personnel problems to persist even at the top of the CMC, for instance by either missing or tolerating the networks that Miao Hua and He Weidong built inside the high command. A transfer to the NDU is a typical solution within the system for handling such a failure: Zhong likely retained Xi's protection, allowing the leader to save face by halting the accusations against him. In this way, Zhong's treatment reflected that of Jia Ting'an, who drew accusations for years but nevertheless kept his rank (FRI, December 1, 2015). Now, however, Zhong has lost everything, signaling that Xi himself finally chose to cut him loose.
Rectification Continues
Zhong's removal alleviates the diminishing returns to terror. When the Party could still buy loyalty with institutional resources, purges could remain surgical and rare. With those incentives dwindling, fear must do the heavy lifting, even as each wave of purges yields less shock than the last. The fatal flaw in purges is exempting the inner circle, since the men who share the leader's table then operate with impunity in plain sight. Xi has eliminated that sanctuary, finally sacrificing a 20-year retainer who possessed no power base of his own.
Xi will be unable to halt the decay, however, and can rely on little other than continuous rectification--"self-revolution"--to enforce military obedience (Xinhua, November 30, 2025). Shockwaves from Zhang Youxia's investigation have largely dissipated, and an August 24 call for reports of irregular purchasing within the Rocket Force signals no letup in the PLA's anticorruption drive (Military Procurement Network, August 24).
The purge nevertheless remains selective. Proximity to Xi retains its value, determining not only who falls first, but how harshly each case is settled. Toward officials on the outer rings, Xi has shown almost no mercy. Two successive defense ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, lacked personal ties to him and each received a suspended death sentence with commutation restricted, the heaviest penalty currently applied at subnational rank or above (Foreign Policy, May 22). Qin Gang, the former foreign minister who spent years in close attendance on Xi, was only stripped of his posts without criminal prosecution (Washington Post, September 8, 2024). Which of these paths Zhong's case follows remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Zhong Shaojun's removal shows how little remains of the means by which Xi once held his elite together. A leader who can no longer offer material rewards to his officials and who no longer shares a common project with them has only fear to work with. Keeping fear at the same level requires sustaining the scale of the purge, and bringing down men close to him from time to time, though the supply of such men is finite.
* * *
Christopher Nye is a Non-Resident Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He previously served as a Professor and directed a university think tank in China. He holds a Ph.D. in Law and specializes in Chinese legal institutions, elite politics, U.S.-China technology competition, and local governance.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/zhong-shaojuns-removal-breaches-xis-innermost-circle/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Teacher Liability Insurance Makes Up Fraction of Union Spending
MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Sept. 15 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
* * *
Teacher liability insurance makes up fraction of union spending
Written by Catrin Wigfall | September 14, 2026
Professional liability insurance is often one of the main reasons teachers are told to stay members of their union. But it's a small fraction of Education Minnesota's total spending.
According to the state union's most recent federal financial disclosure, Education Minnesota spent $111,526 ... Show Full Article MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Sept. 15 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Teacher liability insurance makes up fraction of union spending Written by Catrin Wigfall | September 14, 2026 Professional liability insurance is often one of the main reasons teachers are told to stay members of their union. But it's a small fraction of Education Minnesota's total spending. According to the state union's most recent federal financial disclosure, Education Minnesota spent $111,526on Educators Employment Liability insurance between Sept. 1, 2024 and Aug. 31, 2025. That's less than 0.2 percent of the union's $67.9 million budget. The liability coverage is provided through the National Education Association, Education Minnesota's national affiliate.
At roughly $1,000 a year, paying union membership dues isn't the only way for teachers to get professional liability coverage. A handful of professional education associations offer similar liability coverage and other job protection benefits for a fraction of the cost. And these policies don't require teachers to pay for union politics or advocacy campaigns they may not support.
With union dues increasing again this year, the cost (and value) of membership is worth a second look. September is the once-a-year-only opt-out opportunity that Minnesota teachers have to separate their professional liability coverage from union membership and the political agenda that comes with it.
Teachers questioning the value of rising dues and the union's political priorities should take a closer look at these alternatives. They are not alone in doing so.
* * *
Catrin Wigfall is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
catrin.wigfall@americanexperiment.org
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/teacher-liability-insurance-makes-up-fraction-of-union-spending/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Teacher liability insurance makes up fraction of union spending
Written by Catrin Wigfall | September 14, 2026
Professional liability insurance is often one of the main reasons teachers are told to stay members of their union. But it's a small fraction of Education Minnesota's total spending.
According to the state union's most recent federal financial disclosure, Education Minnesota spent $111,526 ... Show Full Article MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Sept. 15 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Teacher liability insurance makes up fraction of union spending Written by Catrin Wigfall | September 14, 2026 Professional liability insurance is often one of the main reasons teachers are told to stay members of their union. But it's a small fraction of Education Minnesota's total spending. According to the state union's most recent federal financial disclosure, Education Minnesota spent $111,526on Educators Employment Liability insurance between Sept. 1, 2024 and Aug. 31, 2025. That's less than 0.2 percent of the union's $67.9 million budget. The liability coverage is provided through the National Education Association, Education Minnesota's national affiliate.
At roughly $1,000 a year, paying union membership dues isn't the only way for teachers to get professional liability coverage. A handful of professional education associations offer similar liability coverage and other job protection benefits for a fraction of the cost. And these policies don't require teachers to pay for union politics or advocacy campaigns they may not support.
With union dues increasing again this year, the cost (and value) of membership is worth a second look. September is the once-a-year-only opt-out opportunity that Minnesota teachers have to separate their professional liability coverage from union membership and the political agenda that comes with it.
Teachers questioning the value of rising dues and the union's political priorities should take a closer look at these alternatives. They are not alone in doing so.
* * *
Catrin Wigfall is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
catrin.wigfall@americanexperiment.org
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/teacher-liability-insurance-makes-up-fraction-of-union-spending/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Star Tribune Investigation Finds Walz/Flanagan Administration Turned a Blind Eye to Fraud
MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Sept. 15 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
* * *
Star Tribune investigation finds Walz/Flanagan administration turned a blind eye to fraud
Written by John Phelan | September 14, 2026
This weekend, the Star Tribune carried an excellent report by Ryan Faircloth which looked in detail at the Walz/Flanagan administration's handling of Minnesota's epidemic of fraud. It opens:
Gov. Tim Walz was finally taking decisive action.
It was summer 2025.
As ... Show Full Article MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Sept. 15 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Star Tribune investigation finds Walz/Flanagan administration turned a blind eye to fraud Written by John Phelan | September 14, 2026 This weekend, the Star Tribune carried an excellent report by Ryan Faircloth which looked in detail at the Walz/Flanagan administration's handling of Minnesota's epidemic of fraud. It opens: Gov. Tim Walz was finally taking decisive action. It was summer 2025. Asmy colleague Bill Glahn noted recently, this is five years after the Department of Education paused payments to Feeding Our Future and was sued by them for doing so. Talking of the wave of fraud more broadly, Faircloth asks "Why had it taken them so long to see it?"
"By then, warning signs had been accumulating for several years," Faircloth writes:
The Feeding Our Future scandal revealed that alleged fraudsters were involved in multiple taxpayer-funded programs.
State spending on autism services, housing assistance and other Medicaid-funded programs had skyrocketed. Providers were warning about potential abuse. Media outlets, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, published numerous stories.
Yet no one at the top of the Walz administration appeared to examine whether those red flags pointed to a broader problem.
Federal prosecutors ultimately sounded the alarm on what they described as "staggering, industrial-scale fraud," estimating that billions of dollars may have been stolen from more than a dozen Medicaid-funded programs.
"Officials overlooked alarming spending growth in some programs, wrestled with whether to stop payments to known fraud defendants, bristled at fellow Democrats who voiced concerns and did not grasp the scandal's political significance until it became a major threat to Walz's re-election," Faircloth records:
The breakdown was compounded by Walz's leadership style. Former aides and advisers to Walz, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, describe a governor who heavily delegated to his commissioners and senior staff, rarely immersing himself in the details of programs his administration oversaw.
Yet some of the governor's top advisers also appeared to be out of the loop at times, and Walz did not take a substantially more direct role in the state's fraud response until 2025.
Of course, by then, billions of dollars of taxpayer's money had been ransacked through fraud. The whole article is worth reading for the light it sheds on a thoroughly dysfunctional administration.
Faircloth notes that "The governor's office declined to make Walz available for an interview. The office also did not respond to an extensive list of written questions and details about the Minnesota Star Tribune's findings."
* * *
John Phelan is an Economist at the Center of the American Experiment.
john.phelan@americanexperiment.org
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/star-tribune-investigation-finds-walz-flanagan-administration-turned-a-blind-eye-to-fraud/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Star Tribune investigation finds Walz/Flanagan administration turned a blind eye to fraud
Written by John Phelan | September 14, 2026
This weekend, the Star Tribune carried an excellent report by Ryan Faircloth which looked in detail at the Walz/Flanagan administration's handling of Minnesota's epidemic of fraud. It opens:
Gov. Tim Walz was finally taking decisive action.
It was summer 2025.
As ... Show Full Article MINNETONKA, Minnesota, Sept. 15 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Star Tribune investigation finds Walz/Flanagan administration turned a blind eye to fraud Written by John Phelan | September 14, 2026 This weekend, the Star Tribune carried an excellent report by Ryan Faircloth which looked in detail at the Walz/Flanagan administration's handling of Minnesota's epidemic of fraud. It opens: Gov. Tim Walz was finally taking decisive action. It was summer 2025. Asmy colleague Bill Glahn noted recently, this is five years after the Department of Education paused payments to Feeding Our Future and was sued by them for doing so. Talking of the wave of fraud more broadly, Faircloth asks "Why had it taken them so long to see it?"
"By then, warning signs had been accumulating for several years," Faircloth writes:
The Feeding Our Future scandal revealed that alleged fraudsters were involved in multiple taxpayer-funded programs.
State spending on autism services, housing assistance and other Medicaid-funded programs had skyrocketed. Providers were warning about potential abuse. Media outlets, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, published numerous stories.
Yet no one at the top of the Walz administration appeared to examine whether those red flags pointed to a broader problem.
Federal prosecutors ultimately sounded the alarm on what they described as "staggering, industrial-scale fraud," estimating that billions of dollars may have been stolen from more than a dozen Medicaid-funded programs.
"Officials overlooked alarming spending growth in some programs, wrestled with whether to stop payments to known fraud defendants, bristled at fellow Democrats who voiced concerns and did not grasp the scandal's political significance until it became a major threat to Walz's re-election," Faircloth records:
The breakdown was compounded by Walz's leadership style. Former aides and advisers to Walz, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, describe a governor who heavily delegated to his commissioners and senior staff, rarely immersing himself in the details of programs his administration oversaw.
Yet some of the governor's top advisers also appeared to be out of the loop at times, and Walz did not take a substantially more direct role in the state's fraud response until 2025.
Of course, by then, billions of dollars of taxpayer's money had been ransacked through fraud. The whole article is worth reading for the light it sheds on a thoroughly dysfunctional administration.
Faircloth notes that "The governor's office declined to make Walz available for an interview. The office also did not respond to an extensive list of written questions and details about the Minnesota Star Tribune's findings."
* * *
John Phelan is an Economist at the Center of the American Experiment.
john.phelan@americanexperiment.org
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/star-tribune-investigation-finds-walz-flanagan-administration-turned-a-blind-eye-to-fraud/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Capital Research Center Issues Commentary Entitled 'Cuba's Lawyers'
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary:
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Cuba's Lawyers
An 82-year-old New York City law firm has a colorful history of representing avowed communists, accused spies, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro's Cuba and other controversial clients.
by Robert Stilson
September 14, 2026
In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporacion Cimex, S.A., a case which ultimately arose from the expropriation of American-owned property by Cuba's nascent revolutionary communist government all the way back in 1960. The counsel of record representing ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary: * * * Cuba's Lawyers An 82-year-old New York City law firm has a colorful history of representing avowed communists, accused spies, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro's Cuba and other controversial clients. by Robert Stilson September 14, 2026 In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporacion Cimex, S.A., a case which ultimately arose from the expropriation of American-owned property by Cuba's nascent revolutionary communist government all the way back in 1960. The counsel of record representingCuba in the case was Michael Krinsky, of the law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky, & Lieberman, P.C. (RBSKL). Two-thirds of a century later, federal litigation is just one manifestation of the continuing fallout which the Cuban Revolution has produced in the United States, and RBSKL has been in the courtroom every step of the way.
A new InfluenceWatch profile details the remarkable history of RBSKL, and in the process offers a uniquely legal lens through which to view the broader American Left during the middle decades of the 20th century. Cuba is one important chapter in this story, but it also winds its way from the radical labor unions of the 1940s, through the anticommunism of the 1950s, to the anti-Vietnam War activism of the 1960s and the extremism of New Left hardliners in the 1970s, all the way to the nonprofit activism of today.
What eventually became RBSKL--it has gone by multiple names over the years--was founded in 1944. Though always a small firm, for decades it was home to two of the Left's most famous attorneys: Victor Rabinowitz and Leonard Boudin. Rabinowitz was a dedicated Marxist-Leninist in the Soviet sense, and a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) for approximately 20 years. His 1996 memoir Unrepentant Leftist, in addition to offering the candid insights of a radical (and talented) attorney, is an accurate characterization of his lifelong politics. Leonard Boudin was well-known for representing controversial clients in civil liberties cases, though today his surname might more commonly be associated with his daughter, Weather Underground extremist Kathy Boudin, and his grandson, erstwhile San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin.
In its early years, RBSKL was chiefly known for its large New York City-based labor law practice. A series of legal and political developments related to the onset of the Cold War, combined with the substantial influence that communists exercised over several of the firm's notable union clients, led RBSKL to become heavily involved in representing criminal defendants, legislative committee witnesses, and civil litigants during the period of heightened anti-communist sentiment (the "Second Red Scare") from the late 1940s through the 1950s. Through this work, Rabinowitz and Boudin gained a certain measure of national prominence (or notoriety, depending on one's perspective).
In 1960, immediately following the Cuban Revolution, Rabinowitz and Boudin repeatedly traveled to Cuba in what would ultimately prove to be a successful campaign to secure the country's new revolutionary communist government as a client. Che Guevara was said to have personally offered Cuba's business to the firm after winning a game of chess in Havana. Decades of complex (and as this year's Exxon Mobil case illustrates, ongoing) litigation ensued, and to this day the firm's website claims that it remains Cuba's only U.S.-based counsel. RBSKL's other foreign government clients have included post-revolutionary Iran, Sandinista-era Nicaragua, and Salvador Allende-era Chile.
On the domestic side, some of the most notable clients represented by RBSKL attorneys over the years included the accused Soviet spy Judith Coplon, pediatrician and anti-war activist Benjamin Spock, civil rights activist and Georgia state legislator Julian Bond, entertainer Paul Robeson, longtime International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. RBSKL attorneys have also argued numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court--Rabinowitz singled out American Communications Association v. Douds (a 1950 case dealing with the Taft-Hartley Act's anti-communist affidavit requirement) and Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino (a 1964 Cuban expropriation case) for particular attention in his memoirs. Boudin was said to have considered the 1958 right-to-travel case of Kent v. Dulles to have been the most important of his career.
RBSKL has also always had close ties to the radical-left National Lawyers Guild. Boudin and Rabinowitz were founding-era members of the Guild, and Rabinowitz served as its president during the tumultuous period between 1967 and 1970. Krinsky is another prominent member who once represented the Guild in protracted litigation against the FBI, which had engaged in illegal surveillance.
Today, RBSKL's website lists eight attorneys, including principals and "of counsel." One of the of counsel lawyers is Craig Kaplan, a member of the pro-taxation Patriotic Millionaires, and a prominent Democratic Party donor/fundraiser. Kaplan has sat on the boards of multiple left-of-center voter registration and activist nonprofits, including previously at the Project Vote and Voting for America (now known as the Voter Registration Project). As of their respective most recent available tax filings, he remains on the boards of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and America Votes.
To read the full InfluenceWatch profile on Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, P.C., click here (https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/rabinowitz-boudin-standard-krinsky-lieberman-p-c-rbskl/).
* * *
Robert Stilson, Senior Research Analyst
Robert runs several of CRC's specialized projects. Originally from Indiana, he has a B.A. from Hanover College and a J.D. from University of Richmond School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude.
* * *
Original text here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/cubas-lawyers/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Cuba's Lawyers
An 82-year-old New York City law firm has a colorful history of representing avowed communists, accused spies, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro's Cuba and other controversial clients.
by Robert Stilson
September 14, 2026
In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporacion Cimex, S.A., a case which ultimately arose from the expropriation of American-owned property by Cuba's nascent revolutionary communist government all the way back in 1960. The counsel of record representing ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary: * * * Cuba's Lawyers An 82-year-old New York City law firm has a colorful history of representing avowed communists, accused spies, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro's Cuba and other controversial clients. by Robert Stilson September 14, 2026 In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporacion Cimex, S.A., a case which ultimately arose from the expropriation of American-owned property by Cuba's nascent revolutionary communist government all the way back in 1960. The counsel of record representingCuba in the case was Michael Krinsky, of the law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky, & Lieberman, P.C. (RBSKL). Two-thirds of a century later, federal litigation is just one manifestation of the continuing fallout which the Cuban Revolution has produced in the United States, and RBSKL has been in the courtroom every step of the way.
A new InfluenceWatch profile details the remarkable history of RBSKL, and in the process offers a uniquely legal lens through which to view the broader American Left during the middle decades of the 20th century. Cuba is one important chapter in this story, but it also winds its way from the radical labor unions of the 1940s, through the anticommunism of the 1950s, to the anti-Vietnam War activism of the 1960s and the extremism of New Left hardliners in the 1970s, all the way to the nonprofit activism of today.
What eventually became RBSKL--it has gone by multiple names over the years--was founded in 1944. Though always a small firm, for decades it was home to two of the Left's most famous attorneys: Victor Rabinowitz and Leonard Boudin. Rabinowitz was a dedicated Marxist-Leninist in the Soviet sense, and a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) for approximately 20 years. His 1996 memoir Unrepentant Leftist, in addition to offering the candid insights of a radical (and talented) attorney, is an accurate characterization of his lifelong politics. Leonard Boudin was well-known for representing controversial clients in civil liberties cases, though today his surname might more commonly be associated with his daughter, Weather Underground extremist Kathy Boudin, and his grandson, erstwhile San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin.
In its early years, RBSKL was chiefly known for its large New York City-based labor law practice. A series of legal and political developments related to the onset of the Cold War, combined with the substantial influence that communists exercised over several of the firm's notable union clients, led RBSKL to become heavily involved in representing criminal defendants, legislative committee witnesses, and civil litigants during the period of heightened anti-communist sentiment (the "Second Red Scare") from the late 1940s through the 1950s. Through this work, Rabinowitz and Boudin gained a certain measure of national prominence (or notoriety, depending on one's perspective).
In 1960, immediately following the Cuban Revolution, Rabinowitz and Boudin repeatedly traveled to Cuba in what would ultimately prove to be a successful campaign to secure the country's new revolutionary communist government as a client. Che Guevara was said to have personally offered Cuba's business to the firm after winning a game of chess in Havana. Decades of complex (and as this year's Exxon Mobil case illustrates, ongoing) litigation ensued, and to this day the firm's website claims that it remains Cuba's only U.S.-based counsel. RBSKL's other foreign government clients have included post-revolutionary Iran, Sandinista-era Nicaragua, and Salvador Allende-era Chile.
On the domestic side, some of the most notable clients represented by RBSKL attorneys over the years included the accused Soviet spy Judith Coplon, pediatrician and anti-war activist Benjamin Spock, civil rights activist and Georgia state legislator Julian Bond, entertainer Paul Robeson, longtime International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. RBSKL attorneys have also argued numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court--Rabinowitz singled out American Communications Association v. Douds (a 1950 case dealing with the Taft-Hartley Act's anti-communist affidavit requirement) and Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino (a 1964 Cuban expropriation case) for particular attention in his memoirs. Boudin was said to have considered the 1958 right-to-travel case of Kent v. Dulles to have been the most important of his career.
RBSKL has also always had close ties to the radical-left National Lawyers Guild. Boudin and Rabinowitz were founding-era members of the Guild, and Rabinowitz served as its president during the tumultuous period between 1967 and 1970. Krinsky is another prominent member who once represented the Guild in protracted litigation against the FBI, which had engaged in illegal surveillance.
Today, RBSKL's website lists eight attorneys, including principals and "of counsel." One of the of counsel lawyers is Craig Kaplan, a member of the pro-taxation Patriotic Millionaires, and a prominent Democratic Party donor/fundraiser. Kaplan has sat on the boards of multiple left-of-center voter registration and activist nonprofits, including previously at the Project Vote and Voting for America (now known as the Voter Registration Project). As of their respective most recent available tax filings, he remains on the boards of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and America Votes.
To read the full InfluenceWatch profile on Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, P.C., click here (https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/rabinowitz-boudin-standard-krinsky-lieberman-p-c-rbskl/).
* * *
Robert Stilson, Senior Research Analyst
Robert runs several of CRC's specialized projects. Originally from Indiana, he has a B.A. from Hanover College and a J.D. from University of Richmond School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude.
* * *
Original text here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/cubas-lawyers/
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Critical Questions Q&A: China's Open-Weight Challenge to U.S. AI Leadership
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following Critical Questions Q&A on Sept. 14, 2026, involving Deputy Director and senior fellow Lauryn Williams and associate fellow Taylar Rajic, both of the Strategic Technologies Program:
* * *
China's Open-Weight Challenge to U.S. AI Leadership
In early 2026, leading academics effectively declared the "performance gap" separating U.S. and Chinese AI models closed. For China in particular, rapidly moving AI developments are the product of effective technology indigenization in the face of U.S. export controls, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following Critical Questions Q&A on Sept. 14, 2026, involving Deputy Director and senior fellow Lauryn Williams and associate fellow Taylar Rajic, both of the Strategic Technologies Program: * * * China's Open-Weight Challenge to U.S. AI Leadership In early 2026, leading academics effectively declared the "performance gap" separating U.S. and Chinese AI models closed. For China in particular, rapidly moving AI developments are the product of effective technology indigenization in the face of U.S. export controls,and a big bet on an open-weight model approach.
Meanwhile, the United States, which remains the global leader in frontier model capabilities driving discussions about cyber and other national security implications, is grappling across government and industry sectors with its approach to the current wave of AI model developments and corresponding policy conversations. This includes debate over whether to reevaluate its current closed frontier model approach in an environment where the benefits of open-weight models are increasingly appreciated.
In recent weeks, a slew of incidents demonstrated U.S. frontier models' astounding capabilities and provided real-world case studies of misaligned behavior, previously considered confined to testing environments. Models reportedly going rogue include OpenAI's unreleased model GPT-5.6 Sol, which escaped its cybersecurity testing sandbox, reached the open internet to cheat on said tests, and proceeded to hack into AI firm Hugging Face's internal network. Subsequently, in-testing models developed by Anthropic and Meta were also implicated in breaches. Hugging Face, after attempting to counter the autonomous cyberattack using the latest publicly available frontier models and encountering setbacks, consequently decided to use a Chinese open-weight model, GLM-5.2, to diagnose and counter the autonomous hack.
Meanwhile, in Asia, reports circulated shortly afterwards of a hack on Taiwanese government systems that was also conducted autonomously by an AI model, with some evidence suggesting the hackers could be attributed to China. The event was unprecedented and may signal a future where fully autonomous cyberattacks are no longer newsworthy, but commonplace, highlighting the urgent need for widely available AI-enabled cyber defensive capabilities. In the meantime, the AI industry itself in the United States is grappling with what it sees as serious existential risk, and CEOs of some of the largest frontier model labs have called for a strategic pause on AI development. Some believe this fear is unfounded, and that a pause now could be too risky unless there are serious diplomatic efforts with China to coordinate a detente; otherwise, the United States risks losing its narrowing edge in AI leadership.
As the dust settles on these incidents of rogue models conducting autonomous cyberattacks, questions are being raised about the relative threats and opportunities introduced by open- versus closed-weight models, and consequently, the capacity of the U.S. government and industry to protect critical systems as such attacks become more frequent.
Q1: How are closed-weight and open-weight models defined, and what are their relative capabilities?
A1: Closed models are those that keep their code proprietary and confidential, whereas open models publicly disclose aspects of the model's inner workings, including model weights or source code, allowing users to run them locally and tailor them to a particular network environment. Today, this bifurcated AI race is quickly developing on two fronts, with implications for national and economic security.
Both closed- and open-weight model approaches introduce challenges and opportunities. Open-weight models--which some estimates place only four to six months behind advanced closed frontier model capabilities--can be easily leveraged by malicious actors to scale up their activities in a cyber environment that is underprepared for today's risks. At the same time, these models create ripe opportunities for legitimate actors, as they can be configured for a company or government agency's unique network environment and leveraged for cyber defense, as Hugging Face's deployment of GLM-5.2 demonstrated. Despite great attention on closed models in the United States, open-weight models are fundamentally disruptive as they can perform close to, or match, frontier model capabilities today for a fraction of the cost. Closed models, on the other hand, are still the most advanced on the market today: Leading companies have driven the fast pace of technology advancement and are shaping policy conversations in the United States and abroad, including through their own collaboration mechanisms. Yet, this same private sector-driven innovation has also had adverse impacts, as increasingly capable models produce autonomous offensive cyber capabilities that can outsmart guardrails, drawing attention to the need for equally robust, agile cyber defensive tools.
The U.S. government thus faces a decades-old landscape of cybersecurity challenges in a world where AI can automate attacks at unprecedented speed and scale. In the aftermath of the Hugging Face incident, it was revealed the company experienced tens of thousands of automated actions, and 17,000 recorded events. The current laissez-faire U.S. approach to model governance has been primarily reactive; government agencies rush to respond as each new model unleashes new capabilities. Meanwhile, a long-term approach to overhauling the broader U.S. cyber posture is sorely needed--one that leverages AI-enabled defenses, rather than localized approaches to new threats that become outdated with each new model release. And, as recent events suggest, such an approach should include reevaluating the market preference for proprietary, closed-weight models.
Q2: Where does the United States stand today in developing its open-weight model ecosystem?
A2: In July 2026, leading tech giants including NVIDIA and Microsoft published an open letter establishing the Open Secure AI Alliance for AI Safety that argues open-weight models are the future of AI leadership, despite eye-watering investments in the U.S. frontier model ecosystem in recent years. The letter harks back to the open software movement of the 1980s, when advocates pushed for an open-source approach to software development that ultimately led to the innovation and distribution of software systems that now underpin all critical technologies used today. Anthropic was notably absent from the signatories; CEO Dario Amodei wrote a public response to the open letter, citing that although his company does not endorse a ban on open-weight models, he is skeptical frontier models could get out of control and has continued to advocate for slower AI development.
The recent Hugging Face incident was a real-life test run of the assertion that AI models could get out of human control. In this incident, however, Hugging Face utilized an open-weight Chinese model to counter the unprecedented attack, as the guardrails on the closed-weight model had been trained to block the type of commands needed to defend against the attack. The incident highlighted how leading U.S. technology companies have been hinging the future of AI innovation on large-scale, closed-weight models, all while China races to advance its open-weight ecosystem.
Open-weight models lack the same guardrails and central accountability as frontier models. Because they are fundamentally public in nature, anyone can use or misuse them. There is real risk that malicious actors can manipulate code to disable safety tools, remove safeguards, and add harmful capabilities. Furthermore, an open nature means applications of these models cannot be centrally monitored and can spread quickly and irreversibly.
In the case of the Hugging Face incident, however, the closed model was the attacker and the open model was the defender. Rather than approaching the AI ecosystem as a binary of open versus closed, a diversified approach to AI model development is needed in the United States and elsewhere. Open-weight models' security concerns are important to acknowledge, but the inverse is also true of closed models, whose centrally managed guardrails can make it impossible to defend against autonomous attacks in real time. Plus, technical safeguards can be added to open-weight models to make them more secure, such as external red teaming and internal safety evaluations that could be explored further in a market environment that encourages safe, secure open-weight model development.
Q3: What is the current U.S. approach to closed-weight proprietary models?
A3: The U.S. approach over recent years has been to train bigger advanced frontier models on more data, leading to a capital-intensive and mostly closed proprietary approach to AI development concentrated in a few leading technology firms. This approach has so far borne fruit; the United States is currently the world leader in frontier models, which generally outperform Chinese models on key benchmarks and maintain a narrow lead in capabilities. This gap is closing however, with China estimated to only be maximally six months behind the leading U.S. models and some even arguing that, given the pace of AI development, this gap is now all but irrelevant.
U.S. tech companies including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have invested heavily into their own proprietary model ecosystems, and U.S. private sector AI investment was approximately $285 billion in 2026. Leading AI companies are achieving historically high levels of revenue in short periods of time. For example, Anthropic's annual revenue reached $65 billion in August of 2026, more than sevenfold compared to numbers from last year. But as these profits increase, so too does the compute spend, with research and development (R&D) spending having significantly increased in the past 12 months. This approach to AI development awarded the United States an early advantage in developing highly powerful models, with proprietary features, giving companies a competitive edge in performance. This edge is waning however, as China's approach--forged through necessity, indigenous innovation, and distillation attacks on U.S. models--has successfully chipped away at the U.S. advantage and offers a cheaper, more adaptable alternative to customers than that offered by frontier model developers.
Q4: How have distillation attacks on U.S. frontier models advanced Chinese models development?
A4: White House Science and Technology Advisor Michael Kratsios recently accused Chinese company Moonshot AI of a distillation attack on Anthropic's Fable, to train its K3 model. This accusation is in line with claims across the U.S. tech industry that China has leveraged industrial-scale attacks to train its models, by using a "teacher" model that is almost always a much more expensive frontier model to train its "student" model. Although distillation is already used widely within AI training, what makes these actions attacks is the use of undisclosed fraudulent accounts, terms of service violations, and steps to bypass costly R&D--all of which allows Chinese models developers to save both time and money.
In September 2026, several U.S. federal agencies released a cybersecurity advisory, echoing industry claims that China has levied "industrial-scale" distillation attacks against U.S. AI companies. This approach stems from a long history of China's intellectual property (IP) theft that has played out in other tech sectors. As the gap between U.S. closed-weight and Chinese open-weight models rapidly closes, the relative impact of these attacks becomes all the more significant, as China appears to have effectively leveraged a cost-saving approach in context of narrowing AI competition. The proliferation of Chinese open-weight models as a cheaper alternative is not only shaping global tech markets seeking to distance themselves from dependance on U.S. tech, but also having impacts within the United States, as many startups have begun using open-weight models to build and train their own more models more cheaply.
Q5: Have export controls effectively contributed to China's ability to innovate its approach to open-weight models?
A5: U.S. government officials are weighing in on how to best slow China's fast-growing AI ecosystem, with levying sanctions or adding Chinese technology companies to the Entity List among the approaches. A clear lesson learned from the Hugging Face case, however, is that China's open-weight models are filling a gap the United States cannot fulfill. And, notably, China's ability to innovate in open-weight AI models can in many ways be attributed to the U.S. export control regime developed to combat the exact innovation that now threatens its national and economic security.
The current export control regime the United States has imposed on China targets the compute sector, particularly restricting access to the most advanced chips needed to train the most advanced models. However, this approach is arguably less effective in targeting the open model market, shaping China's approach to adapting to the current market environment. Beyond adapting to supply conditions, China currently favors the open-weight approach because it allows for widespread AI adoption without licensing fees or limits on adaptation. The result is a proliferated open-weight environment, which offers a cheaper alternative to U.S. models and reduces dependance on foreign hardware. This is the real risk of China's open-weight approach. Models themselves are not the source of the problem; the issue lies in a future where cheaper and effective Chinese open-weight models become the norm in AI adoption, ceding U.S. leadership to a Chinese-driven AI environment with existential national security risks.
The United States has to date bet on AI technology advancements driven by U.S. frontier models that are heavily dependent on access to large-scale compute and the most advanced chips. Today, this bet may be losing ground to a cheaper, open alternative. China is challenging U.S. AI leadership on two fronts as it invests in an open-weight model ecosystem. The first is economic: By creating systems that are cheaper to run and engaging in IP theft targeting leading U.S. firms, Beijing is targeting the profitability of the U.S. frontier approach. The second front is national security: These models expand the scope and scale of cyber capabilities, which can be increasingly conducted autonomously, enabling China to continue to further challenge the already vulnerable cyber posture of the United States.
* * *
Taylar Rajic is an associate fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Lauryn Williams is deputy director and senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-open-weight-challenge-us-ai-leadership
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
China's Open-Weight Challenge to U.S. AI Leadership
In early 2026, leading academics effectively declared the "performance gap" separating U.S. and Chinese AI models closed. For China in particular, rapidly moving AI developments are the product of effective technology indigenization in the face of U.S. export controls, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following Critical Questions Q&A on Sept. 14, 2026, involving Deputy Director and senior fellow Lauryn Williams and associate fellow Taylar Rajic, both of the Strategic Technologies Program: * * * China's Open-Weight Challenge to U.S. AI Leadership In early 2026, leading academics effectively declared the "performance gap" separating U.S. and Chinese AI models closed. For China in particular, rapidly moving AI developments are the product of effective technology indigenization in the face of U.S. export controls,and a big bet on an open-weight model approach.
Meanwhile, the United States, which remains the global leader in frontier model capabilities driving discussions about cyber and other national security implications, is grappling across government and industry sectors with its approach to the current wave of AI model developments and corresponding policy conversations. This includes debate over whether to reevaluate its current closed frontier model approach in an environment where the benefits of open-weight models are increasingly appreciated.
In recent weeks, a slew of incidents demonstrated U.S. frontier models' astounding capabilities and provided real-world case studies of misaligned behavior, previously considered confined to testing environments. Models reportedly going rogue include OpenAI's unreleased model GPT-5.6 Sol, which escaped its cybersecurity testing sandbox, reached the open internet to cheat on said tests, and proceeded to hack into AI firm Hugging Face's internal network. Subsequently, in-testing models developed by Anthropic and Meta were also implicated in breaches. Hugging Face, after attempting to counter the autonomous cyberattack using the latest publicly available frontier models and encountering setbacks, consequently decided to use a Chinese open-weight model, GLM-5.2, to diagnose and counter the autonomous hack.
Meanwhile, in Asia, reports circulated shortly afterwards of a hack on Taiwanese government systems that was also conducted autonomously by an AI model, with some evidence suggesting the hackers could be attributed to China. The event was unprecedented and may signal a future where fully autonomous cyberattacks are no longer newsworthy, but commonplace, highlighting the urgent need for widely available AI-enabled cyber defensive capabilities. In the meantime, the AI industry itself in the United States is grappling with what it sees as serious existential risk, and CEOs of some of the largest frontier model labs have called for a strategic pause on AI development. Some believe this fear is unfounded, and that a pause now could be too risky unless there are serious diplomatic efforts with China to coordinate a detente; otherwise, the United States risks losing its narrowing edge in AI leadership.
As the dust settles on these incidents of rogue models conducting autonomous cyberattacks, questions are being raised about the relative threats and opportunities introduced by open- versus closed-weight models, and consequently, the capacity of the U.S. government and industry to protect critical systems as such attacks become more frequent.
Q1: How are closed-weight and open-weight models defined, and what are their relative capabilities?
A1: Closed models are those that keep their code proprietary and confidential, whereas open models publicly disclose aspects of the model's inner workings, including model weights or source code, allowing users to run them locally and tailor them to a particular network environment. Today, this bifurcated AI race is quickly developing on two fronts, with implications for national and economic security.
Both closed- and open-weight model approaches introduce challenges and opportunities. Open-weight models--which some estimates place only four to six months behind advanced closed frontier model capabilities--can be easily leveraged by malicious actors to scale up their activities in a cyber environment that is underprepared for today's risks. At the same time, these models create ripe opportunities for legitimate actors, as they can be configured for a company or government agency's unique network environment and leveraged for cyber defense, as Hugging Face's deployment of GLM-5.2 demonstrated. Despite great attention on closed models in the United States, open-weight models are fundamentally disruptive as they can perform close to, or match, frontier model capabilities today for a fraction of the cost. Closed models, on the other hand, are still the most advanced on the market today: Leading companies have driven the fast pace of technology advancement and are shaping policy conversations in the United States and abroad, including through their own collaboration mechanisms. Yet, this same private sector-driven innovation has also had adverse impacts, as increasingly capable models produce autonomous offensive cyber capabilities that can outsmart guardrails, drawing attention to the need for equally robust, agile cyber defensive tools.
The U.S. government thus faces a decades-old landscape of cybersecurity challenges in a world where AI can automate attacks at unprecedented speed and scale. In the aftermath of the Hugging Face incident, it was revealed the company experienced tens of thousands of automated actions, and 17,000 recorded events. The current laissez-faire U.S. approach to model governance has been primarily reactive; government agencies rush to respond as each new model unleashes new capabilities. Meanwhile, a long-term approach to overhauling the broader U.S. cyber posture is sorely needed--one that leverages AI-enabled defenses, rather than localized approaches to new threats that become outdated with each new model release. And, as recent events suggest, such an approach should include reevaluating the market preference for proprietary, closed-weight models.
Q2: Where does the United States stand today in developing its open-weight model ecosystem?
A2: In July 2026, leading tech giants including NVIDIA and Microsoft published an open letter establishing the Open Secure AI Alliance for AI Safety that argues open-weight models are the future of AI leadership, despite eye-watering investments in the U.S. frontier model ecosystem in recent years. The letter harks back to the open software movement of the 1980s, when advocates pushed for an open-source approach to software development that ultimately led to the innovation and distribution of software systems that now underpin all critical technologies used today. Anthropic was notably absent from the signatories; CEO Dario Amodei wrote a public response to the open letter, citing that although his company does not endorse a ban on open-weight models, he is skeptical frontier models could get out of control and has continued to advocate for slower AI development.
The recent Hugging Face incident was a real-life test run of the assertion that AI models could get out of human control. In this incident, however, Hugging Face utilized an open-weight Chinese model to counter the unprecedented attack, as the guardrails on the closed-weight model had been trained to block the type of commands needed to defend against the attack. The incident highlighted how leading U.S. technology companies have been hinging the future of AI innovation on large-scale, closed-weight models, all while China races to advance its open-weight ecosystem.
Open-weight models lack the same guardrails and central accountability as frontier models. Because they are fundamentally public in nature, anyone can use or misuse them. There is real risk that malicious actors can manipulate code to disable safety tools, remove safeguards, and add harmful capabilities. Furthermore, an open nature means applications of these models cannot be centrally monitored and can spread quickly and irreversibly.
In the case of the Hugging Face incident, however, the closed model was the attacker and the open model was the defender. Rather than approaching the AI ecosystem as a binary of open versus closed, a diversified approach to AI model development is needed in the United States and elsewhere. Open-weight models' security concerns are important to acknowledge, but the inverse is also true of closed models, whose centrally managed guardrails can make it impossible to defend against autonomous attacks in real time. Plus, technical safeguards can be added to open-weight models to make them more secure, such as external red teaming and internal safety evaluations that could be explored further in a market environment that encourages safe, secure open-weight model development.
Q3: What is the current U.S. approach to closed-weight proprietary models?
A3: The U.S. approach over recent years has been to train bigger advanced frontier models on more data, leading to a capital-intensive and mostly closed proprietary approach to AI development concentrated in a few leading technology firms. This approach has so far borne fruit; the United States is currently the world leader in frontier models, which generally outperform Chinese models on key benchmarks and maintain a narrow lead in capabilities. This gap is closing however, with China estimated to only be maximally six months behind the leading U.S. models and some even arguing that, given the pace of AI development, this gap is now all but irrelevant.
U.S. tech companies including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have invested heavily into their own proprietary model ecosystems, and U.S. private sector AI investment was approximately $285 billion in 2026. Leading AI companies are achieving historically high levels of revenue in short periods of time. For example, Anthropic's annual revenue reached $65 billion in August of 2026, more than sevenfold compared to numbers from last year. But as these profits increase, so too does the compute spend, with research and development (R&D) spending having significantly increased in the past 12 months. This approach to AI development awarded the United States an early advantage in developing highly powerful models, with proprietary features, giving companies a competitive edge in performance. This edge is waning however, as China's approach--forged through necessity, indigenous innovation, and distillation attacks on U.S. models--has successfully chipped away at the U.S. advantage and offers a cheaper, more adaptable alternative to customers than that offered by frontier model developers.
Q4: How have distillation attacks on U.S. frontier models advanced Chinese models development?
A4: White House Science and Technology Advisor Michael Kratsios recently accused Chinese company Moonshot AI of a distillation attack on Anthropic's Fable, to train its K3 model. This accusation is in line with claims across the U.S. tech industry that China has leveraged industrial-scale attacks to train its models, by using a "teacher" model that is almost always a much more expensive frontier model to train its "student" model. Although distillation is already used widely within AI training, what makes these actions attacks is the use of undisclosed fraudulent accounts, terms of service violations, and steps to bypass costly R&D--all of which allows Chinese models developers to save both time and money.
In September 2026, several U.S. federal agencies released a cybersecurity advisory, echoing industry claims that China has levied "industrial-scale" distillation attacks against U.S. AI companies. This approach stems from a long history of China's intellectual property (IP) theft that has played out in other tech sectors. As the gap between U.S. closed-weight and Chinese open-weight models rapidly closes, the relative impact of these attacks becomes all the more significant, as China appears to have effectively leveraged a cost-saving approach in context of narrowing AI competition. The proliferation of Chinese open-weight models as a cheaper alternative is not only shaping global tech markets seeking to distance themselves from dependance on U.S. tech, but also having impacts within the United States, as many startups have begun using open-weight models to build and train their own more models more cheaply.
Q5: Have export controls effectively contributed to China's ability to innovate its approach to open-weight models?
A5: U.S. government officials are weighing in on how to best slow China's fast-growing AI ecosystem, with levying sanctions or adding Chinese technology companies to the Entity List among the approaches. A clear lesson learned from the Hugging Face case, however, is that China's open-weight models are filling a gap the United States cannot fulfill. And, notably, China's ability to innovate in open-weight AI models can in many ways be attributed to the U.S. export control regime developed to combat the exact innovation that now threatens its national and economic security.
The current export control regime the United States has imposed on China targets the compute sector, particularly restricting access to the most advanced chips needed to train the most advanced models. However, this approach is arguably less effective in targeting the open model market, shaping China's approach to adapting to the current market environment. Beyond adapting to supply conditions, China currently favors the open-weight approach because it allows for widespread AI adoption without licensing fees or limits on adaptation. The result is a proliferated open-weight environment, which offers a cheaper alternative to U.S. models and reduces dependance on foreign hardware. This is the real risk of China's open-weight approach. Models themselves are not the source of the problem; the issue lies in a future where cheaper and effective Chinese open-weight models become the norm in AI adoption, ceding U.S. leadership to a Chinese-driven AI environment with existential national security risks.
The United States has to date bet on AI technology advancements driven by U.S. frontier models that are heavily dependent on access to large-scale compute and the most advanced chips. Today, this bet may be losing ground to a cheaper, open alternative. China is challenging U.S. AI leadership on two fronts as it invests in an open-weight model ecosystem. The first is economic: By creating systems that are cheaper to run and engaging in IP theft targeting leading U.S. firms, Beijing is targeting the profitability of the U.S. frontier approach. The second front is national security: These models expand the scope and scale of cyber capabilities, which can be increasingly conducted autonomously, enabling China to continue to further challenge the already vulnerable cyber posture of the United States.
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Taylar Rajic is an associate fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Lauryn Williams is deputy director and senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-open-weight-challenge-us-ai-leadership
[Category: ThinkTank]
AFPI Urges Congress to Pass the Protect College Sports Act
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release on Sept. 14, 2026:
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AFPI Urges Congress to Pass the Protect College Sports Act
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Following today's press conference outside the U.S. Capitol that brought together Members of Congress, college coaches, and student athletes, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) echoes the sentiment of today's event and the bipartisan momentum behind the Protect College Sports Act.
Today's event sent a clear message: protecting the future of college sports is not a partisan issue. Now is the ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release on Sept. 14, 2026: * * * AFPI Urges Congress to Pass the Protect College Sports Act WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Following today's press conference outside the U.S. Capitol that brought together Members of Congress, college coaches, and student athletes, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) echoes the sentiment of today's event and the bipartisan momentum behind the Protect College Sports Act. Today's event sent a clear message: protecting the future of college sports is not a partisan issue. Now is thetime for Congress to act to provide clear, consistent rules that protect athletes and preserve college sports. Current and future college athletes should not have to question whether their sport is on the chopping block, or if their opportunities to compete at the highest levels of sport are in jeopardy.
"[Sports have] allowed me to become the most disciplined, intelligent version of myself and they've even provided me, a 20-year-old track and field athlete, the opportunity to sit alongside U.S. Senators and advocate for a system, that has not only given me my dream but has transformed the lives of millions of Americans across the country over the last 120 years," said Athletes for America's Ella Brooks, who is a member of the women's track and field team at Clemson University during today's press conference. "That system is in great danger. Constant litigation has denatured a once simple, coherent, and fair set of rules. The NCAA and student athletes are now subject to the decisions of activist judges. Most recent eligibility cases are a perfect example. At the rate at which precedent is changing, I fear that the NCAA will no longer be able to sustain itself. Should that day come, hundreds of thousands of opportunities will disappear. The dreams of kids like my little brother and sister will be crushed, and worst of all, the United States will no longer be able to develop talent for its national and Olympic programs."
The Protect College Sports Act has earned broad support across the collegiate athletics community. Athletes deserve clarity when it comes to their athletics; this legislation provides them with that much needed consistency.
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Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-urges-congress-to-pass-the-protect-college-sports-act
[Category: ThinkTank]
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AFPI Urges Congress to Pass the Protect College Sports Act
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Following today's press conference outside the U.S. Capitol that brought together Members of Congress, college coaches, and student athletes, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) echoes the sentiment of today's event and the bipartisan momentum behind the Protect College Sports Act.
Today's event sent a clear message: protecting the future of college sports is not a partisan issue. Now is the ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release on Sept. 14, 2026: * * * AFPI Urges Congress to Pass the Protect College Sports Act WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Following today's press conference outside the U.S. Capitol that brought together Members of Congress, college coaches, and student athletes, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) echoes the sentiment of today's event and the bipartisan momentum behind the Protect College Sports Act. Today's event sent a clear message: protecting the future of college sports is not a partisan issue. Now is thetime for Congress to act to provide clear, consistent rules that protect athletes and preserve college sports. Current and future college athletes should not have to question whether their sport is on the chopping block, or if their opportunities to compete at the highest levels of sport are in jeopardy.
"[Sports have] allowed me to become the most disciplined, intelligent version of myself and they've even provided me, a 20-year-old track and field athlete, the opportunity to sit alongside U.S. Senators and advocate for a system, that has not only given me my dream but has transformed the lives of millions of Americans across the country over the last 120 years," said Athletes for America's Ella Brooks, who is a member of the women's track and field team at Clemson University during today's press conference. "That system is in great danger. Constant litigation has denatured a once simple, coherent, and fair set of rules. The NCAA and student athletes are now subject to the decisions of activist judges. Most recent eligibility cases are a perfect example. At the rate at which precedent is changing, I fear that the NCAA will no longer be able to sustain itself. Should that day come, hundreds of thousands of opportunities will disappear. The dreams of kids like my little brother and sister will be crushed, and worst of all, the United States will no longer be able to develop talent for its national and Olympic programs."
The Protect College Sports Act has earned broad support across the collegiate athletics community. Athletes deserve clarity when it comes to their athletics; this legislation provides them with that much needed consistency.
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Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-urges-congress-to-pass-the-protect-college-sports-act
[Category: ThinkTank]
AFPI Announces Departure of Dr. Jay Menees for Florida Department of Education
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release:
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AFPI Announces Departure of Dr. Jay Menees for Florida Department of Education
September 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announces that Dr. Jay Menees will be departing his role as Senior Policy Analyst for Higher Education and Economy & Trade Policy to join the Florida Department of Education as Vice Chancellor of Research and Policy.
During his time at AFPI, Dr. Menees helped advance policies focused on workforce education and training, greater transparency ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release: * * * AFPI Announces Departure of Dr. Jay Menees for Florida Department of Education September 14, 2026 WASHINGTON, D.C.--The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announces that Dr. Jay Menees will be departing his role as Senior Policy Analyst for Higher Education and Economy & Trade Policy to join the Florida Department of Education as Vice Chancellor of Research and Policy. During his time at AFPI, Dr. Menees helped advance policies focused on workforce education and training, greater transparencyand accountability in higher education, and stronger alignment between education and the needs of American workers and employers.
His research and policy expertise have been an important part of AFPI's work to strengthen higher education and expand opportunities for students and workers.
"Jay is one of the leading minds in understanding how government policy impacts workers. We appreciate the tremendous work he has done at AFPI to reshape the federal landscape and look forward to the ways he will help Florida lead the nation in education," said Dr. Michael Shires, Vice Chair of Education Opportunity Policy and Senior Policy Officer at AFPI.
In his new role at the Florida Department of Education, Dr. Menees will coordinate research efforts and strengthen the use of data to inform policy decisions across the Department's divisions. He will oversee efforts to modernize research functions, integrate data with other state agencies, including Florida Commerce, and advance a more innovative, accessible, and transparent approach to data and research.
Dr. Menees will continue his affiliation with AFPI as a Fellow for Higher Education and Economy & Trade Policy.
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Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-announces-departure-of-dr-jay-menees-for-florida-department-of-education
[Category: ThinkTank]
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AFPI Announces Departure of Dr. Jay Menees for Florida Department of Education
September 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announces that Dr. Jay Menees will be departing his role as Senior Policy Analyst for Higher Education and Economy & Trade Policy to join the Florida Department of Education as Vice Chancellor of Research and Policy.
During his time at AFPI, Dr. Menees helped advance policies focused on workforce education and training, greater transparency ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release: * * * AFPI Announces Departure of Dr. Jay Menees for Florida Department of Education September 14, 2026 WASHINGTON, D.C.--The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announces that Dr. Jay Menees will be departing his role as Senior Policy Analyst for Higher Education and Economy & Trade Policy to join the Florida Department of Education as Vice Chancellor of Research and Policy. During his time at AFPI, Dr. Menees helped advance policies focused on workforce education and training, greater transparencyand accountability in higher education, and stronger alignment between education and the needs of American workers and employers.
His research and policy expertise have been an important part of AFPI's work to strengthen higher education and expand opportunities for students and workers.
"Jay is one of the leading minds in understanding how government policy impacts workers. We appreciate the tremendous work he has done at AFPI to reshape the federal landscape and look forward to the ways he will help Florida lead the nation in education," said Dr. Michael Shires, Vice Chair of Education Opportunity Policy and Senior Policy Officer at AFPI.
In his new role at the Florida Department of Education, Dr. Menees will coordinate research efforts and strengthen the use of data to inform policy decisions across the Department's divisions. He will oversee efforts to modernize research functions, integrate data with other state agencies, including Florida Commerce, and advance a more innovative, accessible, and transparent approach to data and research.
Dr. Menees will continue his affiliation with AFPI as a Fellow for Higher Education and Economy & Trade Policy.
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Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-announces-departure-of-dr-jay-menees-for-florida-department-of-education
[Category: ThinkTank]