Dan Bongino said attempts by Chinese artificial intelligence companies to copy the capabilities of American AI systems ended up exposing sensitive Chinese information to a U.S. company, an episode he used to argue that patriotism and national security must become larger priorities inside American technology companies and universities.

“Again, I had to read this twice, and the theme of today's show is, Hey, this sounds like a big deal,” Bongino said.

He pointed to information circulated by Jennifer Wu concerning Chinese companies attempting to gain capabilities from Anthropic’s Claude model. Anthropic has reported that Chinese AI companies secretly routed large numbers of customer interactions through Claude as part of efforts to improve their own models.

“So these Chinese companies tried to steal this AI model, Claude's, capabilities,” Bongino said.

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“They accidentally handed the United States their own state secrets instead.”

Bongino said the activity went far beyond simply generating training material.

“Anthropic disclosed that Chinese AI firms didn't just use Claude to generate training data,” Bongino said.

“In one case, a company secretly routed over 300,000 real user requests through Claude over 10 days without the users ever knowing.”

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He said those requests included highly sensitive information.

“What came through in that traffic?” Bongino asked.

“Surveillance material from a user Anthropic suspects is People's Liberation Army-affiliated, login credentials from engineers at major Chinese state-owned enterprises, probably connected to the Communist Party, data from police management systems, and internal details of Chinese AI.”

Anthropic’s own report described cases involving Chinese technology information, police surveillance systems, and other sensitive material being relayed to Claude without the original users necessarily realizing it.

“Instead, they built a pipeline to quietly expose Chinese state and military data to a US company,” Bongino said.

Bongino argued that the episode demonstrates both the seriousness of the Chinese technological challenge and the importance of maintaining American leadership.

“There has never been a better time to be an American in the golden age of politics right now,” Bongino said.

“The bad news that we need to fix is you've seen the China threat. Not good, but they're not us.”

He acknowledged that American companies will also make mistakes, but said the people making consequential decisions inside technology firms need to put the country’s interests first.

“However, we need patriots inside these companies. Folks, I mean it. We need people that love America,” Bongino said.

He clarified that he was not claiming everyone who disagrees politically with him is unpatriotic.

“I'm not telling you every Democrat out there doesn't love America, that's not what I'm saying,” Bongino said.

“There's coal miners in West Virginia vote Democrat; love America like you, they just have a different idea.”

Bongino said the stakes surrounding artificial intelligence make national loyalty especially important.

“However, the commies and progressives and the blue-haired liberals do not,” Bongino said.

“I say that because going forward, in order for us to not make catastrophic mistakes like this with AI in our economy, we're going to need people who love America first inside these companies.”

He then connected the AI issue to higher education, citing an article by Walter Russell Mead titled “Higher Ed Will Soon Get Patriotic.”

Mead argued that renewed geopolitical competition is putting greater pressure on American universities to reconsider questions involving national security and institutional priorities.

“He notes how parents, especially in really patriotic areas of the country, the South, Midwest, the Rust Belt, they just don't want to send their kids to woke colleges anymore,” Bongino said.

“They don't really care if it's Harvard or whatever. They don't care. They want their kids to go to college and love America.”

Bongino said national security concerns surrounding scientific research, foreign collaboration and sensitive technologies could increasingly force universities to reconsider how they operate.

“University-based scientific research has to take national security concerns more seriously,” Bongino said.

He argued that universities could face consequences if they fail to adjust.

“From student recruitment to institutional collaborations with sensitive technologies, American universities are going to have to think more patriotically or risk massive reputational damage and less federal funding,” Bongino said.

Bongino concluded that changes already underway in technology and higher education could accelerate quickly as competition with China intensifies.

“Folks, I'm telling you, man, things are starting to change and change fast and change dramatically.”

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