China's underground market for Claude access thrives despite ban
Source: WIRED Made in China (paywall)
Anthropic's geographic restrictions on Claude access have spawned a resale market where Chinese users pay premiums for accounts accessed through proxies and forged credentials. The demand reflects frontier AI tools' scarcity in restricted markets. This mirrors previous digital workarounds (VPNs, app store hacks) but exposes a tension for AI safety companies: geographic enforcement drives users toward less transparent access patterns rather than eliminating demand. For consumer tech companies, restricting markets doesn't eliminate them—it migrates them underground and erodes the ability to monitor actual usage.