Who said they need to distill anything? Deepseek is the most popular chinese model getting trillions of input tokens a day that have no ZDR availability. They specifically tell you that part of the deal is that they get your data to use however they want (atleast they're honest).

This idea that Deepseek needed to distil their way to success is nonsense. Its a great narrative for OpenAI and Anthropic to spread because Americans have been brainwashed for two decades into dealing with their own inadequacies by blaming things on scary asians stealing things.

In reality China is outworking and lapping most American companies. They produce 10 EEs to every 1 America produces. They are simply harder workers.

The West is cooked because we're too lazy to work hard and we'd rather make up stories about boogeyman who are stealing from us. The only thing we're good at now is killing people who economically challenge us.