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Chinese AI models raise ‘sleeper agent’ fears after report finds more vulnerable code for US users
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Chinese AI models used to write code may be creating a hidden security risk for U.S. companies, federal officials and government contractors, per a new report published by a major defense contractor specializing in cyber security.
Booz Allen published a report in late May warning the federal government, private software developers and workers in critical industries that the presence of code written by popular Chinese AI models within the supply chain may be making the United States more vulnerable to bad faith actors. These vulnerabilities aren’t simple backdoors, Booz Allen reports, but rather come in the form of Chinese large language models producing lower-quality, and thus easier to breach, code when they believe they are being prompted by an American.
Chinese models are generally cheaper than their Western counterparts and work well enough to keep companies interested, a dynamic that has led to increased adoption in the United States and put some policymakers and national security experts on edge.
«I’d say there’s an 80% chance they’re using a Chinese open-source model,» Martin Casado, a general partner at the major venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said in November 2025 when asked about their prevalence among start ups. Major U.S. firms such as Meta, Airbnb and Perplexity are also reportedly using Chinese models.
The DeepSeek AI app is shown on a smartphone screen with the Chinese flag in the background. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
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«The first link in the software supply chain is no longer the code. It’s the AI models behind it,» the Booz Allen report reads. «As U.S. developers increasingly rely on AI to generate, debug, and secure code, we must confront a fundamental question: can the AI models writing and powering our nation’s code be trusted?»
In an attempt to answer this question, Booz Allen compared four of the most widely used Chinese models — Kimi, Qwen, MiniMax and DeepSeek — against Anthropic’s Claude to test the security of the code they produced. The firms behind the four Chinese models did not respond to requests for comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
Qwen and MiniMax both produced code with significantly more vulnerabilities, increases of 130% and 20%, respectively, when they believed they were doing work for U.S. government employees as compared to a general prompt. DeepSeek, meanwhile, saw an increase of just 5% while Kimi produced code of a similar quality.
This means a government contractor relying on one of these models could unknowingly introduce coding flaws that make databases, applications or internal systems easier for hackers to exploit, potentially exposing sensitive American information.
The findings have drawn comparisons to so-called «sleeper agent» behavior where AI models appear to operate normally until exposed to a specific trigger that causes them to produce lower quality, or even deliberately insecure, outputs.
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Experts interviewed by Fox News Digital expressed a range of opinions on Booz Allen’s findings.
«While the raised risk categories are understandable, the report’s stronger claims are not fully supported as presented,» Lukasz Olejnik, a technology consultant who works as a senior research fellow at King’s College London, told Fox News Digital. «The report underplays the complexity of the issue.»
If Booz Allen’s report were accurate, and if code written by Chinese models had made its way into the American supply chain, it would make it easier for hackers to get their hands on data that could imperil national security or infringe on the privacy of everyday Americans.
Olejnik argued that the prompting used by Booz Allen was unnatural, saying that the firm’s methodology may have included «unnecessary political or institutional keyword triggers,» such as explicitly prompting models to believe a user is working for the FBI, that «may change outputs.» It is unlikely, he says, that an actual government agent would prompt the model in such a way.
Booz Allen claims that «testing model behaviors by introducing specific context is a best practice in both defensive and offensive evaluations.»
«I use various open-source models daily, including U.S. and Chinese,» the researcher, who holds a computer science Ph.D. from Inria, one of the world’s leading research institutions in the field, said. «Chinese models are so useful precisely because they are performant and freely available. Prohibiting open source models is not a good idea; it would stifle AI innovation and national security … The best approach to go beyond them is to encourage U.S. and EU companies to release their own high-capability open-weight models.»
Open source models made their underlying code directly viewable by users, allowing for security audits and edits, though even some open source programs harbor hidden vulnerabilities inserted by malicious actors.
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Pages from the Anthropic website and the company’s logos are displayed on a computer screen in New York on Feb. 26, 2026. (Patrick Sison/AP Photo)
While Olejnik agreed that «model outputs can shift under variety of prompts,» he added that «insufficient evidence has been posted to verify the causal claims or generalize them to Chinese LLMs as a class.»
Lenart Heim, an independent researcher specializing in AI and semiconductors, was more open to Booz Allen’s findings.
«It seems like a credible study, and I don’t find the overall findings incredibly surprising,» the researcher told Fox News Digital.
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The flag of China is flown behind a pair of surveillance cameras outside the Central Government Offices. (Roy Liu/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Heim, who holds a master’s in computer engineering from the prestigious ETH Zurich and was until recently a top AI researcher at the RAND Corporation, pointed to a similar study published by CrowdStrike in 2025, which found that politically sensitive trigger words caused DeepSeek to produce up to 50% more insecure code.
«The extreme version of what we’re worried about here is what researchers call ‘sleeper agents,’» Heim continued. «There’s an existing paper from Anthropic that demonstrates you can train models to behave normally until a specific trigger condition is met — say, a particular year or context — at which point they start writing insecure code.»
In the Booz Allen study, he explained, identifying oneself as a U.S. government agent was presented as such a trigger. Heim, however, said that he found it «pretty implausible that the Chinese developers intentionally implemented sleeper agents with these specific triggers,» suggesting that the increased code insecurity was a side effect of broader «CCP-aligned fine-tuning» and that «the security differential they found is probably not that large in practice.»
AI applications Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are shown in this image. The photo was taken by Samuel Boivin and provided by NurPhoto via Getty Images. (Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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«It is certainly possible to implement sleeper agents in these models for specific situations to write insecure code,» he went on. «You might think: ‘Well, I won’t tell the model I’m in the US government — I’ll just ask it to write code.’ But as we move toward more agentic use, there will be lots of contextual information automatically fed to the model. You might give it an existing codebase, and that codebase often has a license header at the top that reveals which company or government agency it belongs to. That context could activate degraded behavior.»
A source at Booz Allen told Fox News Digital that the authors of the report defined «vulnerabilities» as «code that can be exploited by an attacker» to allow for «unauthorized access, data theft, system disruption, or control of the affected software.» The report looked at common security flaws such as «hardcoded passwords, SQL injection risks, missing security tokens, outdated encryption and disabled security checks.»
Booz Allen’s analysts used both manual verification and automated checks to quantify the number of vulnerabilities in programs produced by each model.
A representative for Booz Allen told Fox News Digital that their team accessed the Chinese models online rather than using downloading them directly to their machines and running them locally. Heim said that Chinese models accessed in this way may be more prone to bias.
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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., arrives for a vote in the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025, stating the war with Iran will continue for weeks as the U.S. limits their offensive capabilities. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The report also found that Chinese LLMs refused to perform tasks that could conflict with the interests of the Chinese government at significantly higher rates than Claude. Similar tests performed by others have netted similar results.
«Many Chinese LLMs learn from data shaped by China’s internet and Chinese government information controls,» the report notes. «Chinese law requires all AI models, training outputs, and data to reflect ‘Core Socialist Values.’»
Booz Allen recommended that the United States government take action to ban Chinese models for use on government or infrastructure work and recommended that contractors involved in such sectors, as well as the tech community generally, proactively work to remove code generated by such models from their supply chains.
«A lower-cost model may look attractive upfront, especially for startups or cost-constrained engineering teams,» the report reads. «But that same model can become more expensive over time if it generates vulnerable code, creates uncertainty around data handling, or introduces behavior that standard enterprise controls do not easily catch.»
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Booz Allen’s point of view has some sympathizers on Capitol Hill.
«American companies shouldn’t build applications and write code with Chinese models, which introduce more cyber vulnerabilities,» Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told Fox News Digital when presented with Booz Allen’s report. «And the federal government should certainly not buy software from companies using Chinese coding tools.»
china, technologies, artificial intelligence
Concebido como un espacio seguro para el diálogo, la formación y el compromiso de avanzar hacia una sociedad más consciente, responsable y cercana a quienes han sufrido abuso, Panamá será sede, del 8 al 11 de julio, del congreso internacional de las personas sordas.
En el país hay 11,323 personas con deficiencia auditiva, según la Segunda Encuesta Nacional de Discapacidad, realizada en el primer trimestre de 2024, después de 18 años sin tener información actualizada.
Solo en 2025 el Instituto Panameño de Habilitación Especial (IPHE) atendió a 18,319 estudiantes con esta condición.
La discapacidad auditiva se define como la pérdida o anormalidad de la función anatómica y/o fisiológica del sistema auditivo, y tiene su consecuencia inmediata en una discapacidad para oír, lo que implica un déficit en el acceso al lenguaje oral.
Se informó que el congreso busca ofrecer un espacio de escucha y reflexión sobre la realidad que viven las personas sordas víctimas de abuso.
De igual manera, tiene como finalidad fortalecer la formación en materia de prevención, protección de menores y adultos vulnerables, y promoción de entornos seguros dentro de nuestras comunidades eclesiales, dijo monseñor José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta, arzobispo de Panamá, presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal Panameña y segundo vicepresidente del CELAM.
La convención reunirá a especialistas internacionales, agentes pastorales y personas sordas de diversos países de América, con el propósito de sensibilizar sobre los desafíos particulares que enfrenta esta población y promover una cultura de cuidado, respeto, inclusión y protección.
El “Abuso sexual en la Iglesia: su historia y realidad actual. Como se relaciona y afecta a la comunidad sorda”; “El caso Próvolo: ejemplo de modelo interdisciplinario para responder al desafío del abuso en la comunidad sorda en Argentina”; “Perspectiva global: cómo la Iglesia comenzó a escuchar las voces de quienes han sido abusados”, serán algunos de los temas a tratar durante la actividad.
El encuentro es organizado por la Iniciativa de los Jóvenes Católicos Sordos de América (DCYIA, por sus sus siglas en inglés), en colaboración con la Pontificia Comisión para la Protección del Menor, de la Santa Sede; el Centro de Investigación y Formación Interdisciplinar para la Protección del Menor, el Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano y Caribeño (CELAM) y la Arquidiócesis de Panamá.
En Panamá la Ley N°1 del 28 de enero de 1992 protege a las personas con discapacidad auditiva y reconoce la lengua de señas como la lengua natural del discapacitado auditivo profundo.
Esta es una herramienta fundamental de inclusión, y la norma reafirma la importancia de promover una cultura institucional basada en el respeto, la accesibilidad y la equiparación de oportunidades.
Ratificada por Panama, la Convención Internacional sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad establece en su artículo 21 el derecho a la libertad de expresión y acceso a la información, incluyendo el uso de la lengua de señas como medio de comunicación.
En esa línea, la política nacional de discapacidad de Panamá promueve la eliminación de barreras comunicativas y la plena participación de las personas sordas en todos los ámbitos de la sociedad, de acuerdo con el IPHE.
La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) indica que a nivel mundial más de 1.500 millones de personas presentan algún grado de pérdida auditiva, de las cuales aproximadamente 430 millones tienen pérdida auditiva de moderada a grave en el oído con mejor audición.
En América, alrededor de 217 millones de personas viven con pérdida auditiva, cifra que se espera aumente a 322 millones para 2050. Las estimaciones de la OMS proyectan que 700 millones necesitarán atención otológica y servicios de rehabilitación si no se toman medidas preventivas.
hombre,mujer,niña,audífono,familia,discapacidad auditiva
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EXCLUSIVE: Meet the man Israel chose to be its first-ever ambassador to the Christian world
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JERUSALEM, Israel: In a move being praised by many Christian leaders, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced the appointment of a new position of envoy to the Christian world — with the goal of better and smoother relations with the Christian world.
In an exclusive interview in Jerusalem, Ambassador George Deek told Fox News Digital the importance the Netanyahu government has put on his position.
«We see the ethnic cleansing of the region from its Christians, who have been diminished from 20% of the population of the Middle East to less than 2% of the population today,» Deek said. «All those places that used to have thriving Christian communities today have been reduced to nothing.»
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Ambassador George Deek is Israel’s first envoy to the Christian world. (Yoav Dudkevich/TPS-IL)
Israel counts 300 churches, double the number in 1948, while its Christian population has grown from 34,000 in 1948 to more than 180,000 today.
Deek said of his role. «My hope is to also be able to build strong bridges between the State of Israel and Christian leaders… by telling a fuller story of the State of Israel, which I think is missed in most of the narratives we hear today in the world,» he said.
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, as of December 2025, Israel’s Christian population stood at approximately 184,200, representing 1.9% of the country’s total population. The community grew by 0.7% over the previous year.
Deek, who served for six years as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan before assuming his current role, said most people know Israel only through its Jewish identity and are unaware of the complexity and diversity of Israeli society.
Deek said the decision announced by the Foreign Ministry in April to appoint him to the role stems from three factors: first, the special connection between Christians and the land of Israel as the birthplace of Christianity.
Christian pilgrims carrying wooden crosses walk through Jerusalem’s Old City toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during the Orthodox Good Friday procession on May 3, 2024. (Ahamd Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Second is the deep historical bond reflected in the churches of the Holy Land and in Christians and Jews living under shared biblical values, from which they derive societal principles including democracy, individualism, and freedom of conscience and thought.
Third is the importance Israel places on relations with people of all denominations and religions.
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«It has a special relationship with the Christian people abroad and the Christian community in Israel, which is the only Christian community in the entire Middle East that is actually growing in numbers and basically thriving as part of Israeli society,» Deek said.
«As the only nation to appoint a special envoy to the Christian world, Israel has indicated its deep appreciation for Christian support and its long-term interest in guarding Christian-Jewish relations. This is especially vital in this time of resurgent antisemitism spreading like wildfire in the poorly regulated digital sphere,» International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) ‘s President Dr. Jürgen Bühler told Fox News Digital.
Israel’s northern city of Nazareth and its Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation on Dec. 18, 2021. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
The organization has operated from Jerusalem for 46 years and maintains branch offices and representatives in 95 countries, with a presence spanning approximately 185 nations worldwide.
It recently organized an emergency summit on antisemitism that brought together more than 200 theologians, pastors and ministry leaders from over 30 countries in person, alongside approximately 3,000 participants attending online.
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He says Israel has the potential to serve as both an inspiration and a partner across the region and beyond, helping ensure that people can practice their faith freely and remain in the lands of their forefathers.
The annual Christmas parade in Nazareth, Israel on Dec. 24, 2025. (Eitan Elhadez-Barak/TPS-IL)
Still, Deek noted that in recent months there have been several isolated incidents involving attacks on Christian symbols and, in one case, an assault on a Christian nun.
«More than anything, this was an attack on the values on which this country is established—values of tolerance and acceptance — where no one has the right to attack anyone or use violence against anyone for any reason whatsoever, especially not attack a symbol of Christianity, Islam or Judaism,» he said.
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«That is absolutely unacceptable and that is why the leadership of the State of Israel, from the prime minister to the foreign minister and others, have all condemned it unequivocally and unanimously,» he added.
The pastor of the Home of Jesus the King church in Nazareth says one of the biggest challenges facing Israel’s Christian community is a low birth rate. (Pastor Saleem Shalash)
The Israeli soldier who desecrated a cross in southern Lebanon is in prison, as is the individual who pushed a nun to the ground and attacked her in Jerusalem. These cases, Deek said, demonstrate that the State of Israel takes such incidents very seriously and fully enforces the law.
Amid a surge in antisemitic incidents in Europe and elsewhere following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre, Deek said hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews, and that the same hate that drove out Jews from Arab countries in the 20th century has over the past two decades been directed against other minorities in the region.
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«We see it even with Hamas pushing out the Christian population there, which has completely disappeared from Gaza,» he added.
Within this environment, Israel is the only place where such minorities have been able to live safely and practice their faith without fear. In fact, they do not merely survive in the State of Israel, they thrive, Deek said.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, leads a ceremony as part of the Orthodox Feast of the Epiphany at the Qasr al-Yahud baptismal site near Jericho on Jan. 18, 2025. (Hazem Bader/AFP Via Getty Images)
He nevertheless pointed to a well-oiled campaign by forces on the woke left and right, along with extremist Islamist groups, that are manipulating the Christian faith and promoting claims of what he says is the so-called mistreatment of Christians in Israel.
«I see it as a personal mission to bring as many Christians as possible to visit the land of Israel, not as a political campaign…. I want them to come here to connect to their Bible. I want them to connect to their Scripture, I want them to connect to the roots of their values by simply going to those places,» Deek said.
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«And, under the protection of Israel as the guardian of the holy sites of Christianity… to reconnect to these values and to remember that these are the biblical values that connect Jews, Christians and all the people of the book in this world,» he added.
israel, christianity religion, benjamin netanyahu, middle east, anti semitism
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Trump’s Iran gamble divides GOP hawks and ‘America First’ conservatives over what victory looks like
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President Donald Trump may have united Republicans behind military action against Iran, but his push to formalize peace is proving far more divisive.
As details of a memorandum of understanding emerge, GOP hawks are questioning whether the administration gave up too much, while Trump allies argue the president achieved a historic objective that crippled Iran’s military capabilities without dragging the U.S. into another prolonged war.
The disagreement is about more than Iran. It has exposed a growing divide inside the GOP over what Trump’s «America First» foreign policy should look like in practice — and what victory should mean once a military campaign ends.
At its core, the debate centers on competing visions of American power. One camp views military success as leverage to extract maximum concessions from adversaries and secure lasting strategic gains. The other sees it as a tool to neutralize threats and end conflicts before they become another Iraq or Afghanistan. Trump’s Iran agreement has forced those competing philosophies into a rare public collision.
That divide is already playing out among some of the party’s most prominent national security voices.
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The administration’s memorandum of understanding with Tehran has exposed a divide among Republicans over what constitutes victory after the military campaign against Iran. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The deal’s fiercest Republican critics argue Trump is giving away leverage at the very moment Iran is most vulnerable. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., has blasted the agreement on X as the «worst foreign policy blunder in decades,» while Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., has warned it appears «out of step» with the goals of the military campaign.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has questioned the concessions offered to Tehran and former U.N. Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has criticized proposals that could help rebuild Iran.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has gone even further, calling the agreement a potential «lifeline» for the regime and warning it «smacks of appeasement.»
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Vice President JD Vance has defended Trump’s Iran agreement as the culmination of a successful military campaign that brought Tehran to the negotiating table from a position of weakness. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump’s allies, however, argue critics are overlooking the sweeping military campaign that preceded the agreement.
Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials contend the president achieved his core objective after U.S. and allied forces struck key Iranian military and nuclear sites, eliminated senior commanders and inflicted significant damage on Tehran’s military infrastructure. Supporters say those operations crippled Iran’s ability to project power, restored deterrence and ultimately brought the regime to the negotiating table without requiring a large-scale deployment of American ground troops.
They argue victory is defined by achieving U.S. objectives and ending the conflict on favorable terms — not by risking another prolonged war in the Middle East.
The clash highlights a foreign policy debate that has been simmering inside the Republican Party for years.
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Supporters argue the agreement locks in military gains, while critics contend it gives Tehran too much after suffering major setbacks. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Getty Images)
While Republicans have largely rallied around Trump’s use of military force against Iran, the disagreement over what comes next reflects a deeper tension inside the party.
For traditional hawks, military victories create opportunities to reshape adversaries and secure lasting concessions. For many America First conservatives, the objective is narrower: neutralize threats, avoid nation-building and keep U.S. troops out of prolonged conflicts.
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As lawmakers and conservative leaders continue debating the memorandum of understanding’s merits, the fight may ultimately be less about the details of the Iran deal than about the future direction of Republican foreign policy — and what victory should mean in the Middle East.
war with iran, national security, donald trump, foreign policy, republicans, politics
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EXCLUSIVE: Meet the man Israel chose to be its first-ever ambassador to the Christian world
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