> I think it is a reasonable term to use in the context of adversarial AI development

Distillation is neither an 'attack', nor 'adversarial' in any reasonable sense.

> Does that mean I am getting paid by the CIA or something

It at the very least means you're uncritically parroting the framing of a company that'd like nothing more than to successfully persuade lawmakers that something should be done about open Chinese models (eliminate choice), preferably so that Anthropic is close to anyone's only option.