Alibaba is banning its workers from using Claude Code as US v China AI battle heats up
- Alibaba bans access to Claude Code, tells employees to use internal Qoder instead
- Anthropic was tracking markers to indicate which users were in China
- Anthropic accused Alibaba of major Claude model distillation effort
Alibaba has reportedly banned its employees from using Claude Code internally, beginning July 10 2026, classifying it as a high-risk tool that risks organizational security.
The change follows similar trends already observed among American tech giants, banning Chinese tools from internal use, but Alibaba cited genuine concerns that have been acknowledged by Claude-maker Anthropic.
The ban could also be seen as a push for Alibaba's own alternative, with workers advised to use the company's own Qoder AI assistant instead.
Alibaba bans Claude Code over security concerns
The controversy stems from developers reverse-engineering Claude Code, revealing it contained code to identify Chinese users. Checks for Chinese system time zones, proxy servers, AI lab infrastructure and network characteristics were...
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