In the charged space before a planned meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping, the United States has accused China of systematically extracting knowledge from advanced AI models through a technique called distillation — a practice officials frame as a deliberate circumvention of export controls and intellectual property protections. China has rejected the allegation entirely, casting it as a pretext for American technological dominance. The dispute is older than its latest flare-up: it is the story of two powers competing not just for markets, but for the future architecture of intellig