Beijing Tightens Control Over AI Talent With New Travel Restrictions

China is expanding its quiet travel restrictions on top AI researchers, requiring senior staff at private AI companies to surrender their passports, a policy that began at DeepSeek and now extends across the sector. The move reflects Beijing’s view of frontier AI as a strategic national asset, amid concerns that talent traveling abroad could leak sensitive information or be targeted by foreign companies or governments. The controls accompany broader efforts to pull capital, talent and corporate structures back inside China, as the country rapidly narrows the performance gap with US AI models. While the policy strengthens state control, it risks harming international collaboration and may prove difficult to enforce as it scales to thousands of researchers.

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