China-based technology giant Alibaba has decided to ban its employees from using the programming tool Claude Code developed by Anthropic. The ban in question will be valid as of July 10.

Anthropic currently bans Chinese companies and foreign entities owned by those companies from using their models. The company is working to close loopholes that allow Chinese users to access Claude systems.

Security concerns and software restrictions

A recent Reddit post suggested that a version of Claude Code that could secretly identify Chinese users was used in the process of closing these loopholes. Thariq Shihipar from Anthropic stated in his statement on the X platform that this was an experiment that started in March.

Shihipar stated that this application was designed to prevent account abuse by unauthorized sellers and to protect against model distillation processes. Model distillation is defined as the process of training artificial intelligence models using the outputs of other models.

Anthropic official announced that the team has taken stronger measures since then and that they plan to remove this feature. However, these statements did not change Alibaba’s decision.

Alternative analysis of Alibaba: Qoder

Alibaba classified the Claude Code software as high risk and instructed its employees not to use the tool. The company directs its employees to use the Qoder tool it developed instead of Claude Code.

This breakthrough is considered as part of the security measures taken by Chinese technology companies against foreign artificial intelligence tools. Encouraging the use of domestic tools in in-company software development processes is important for information security strategies.

What do you think about Alibaba’s Claude Code ban and the transition to its own vehicles?