Google researcher: Reflection's Beam is a "laundered" Chinese model — and that's actually safer
ibab · x · 2026-10-07
Google researcher ibab confirms Reflection's Beam is a "laundered" model: it distills Chinese models, which in turn distilled top US models. But he argues this is genuinely useful.
If US companies worry about backdoors in Chinese models, distillation strips them out — and Reflection can inspect its training data to ensure no backdoor behavior remains. That makes the model safer for critical applications, builds trust, and is ultimately good for open-weight adoption in the US.
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