In the past week, China released their own AI named DeepSeek and it has sent shockwaves throughout the tech sphere. The AI is a direct competitor to the US-based company OpenAI’s ChatGPT and even performs better than ChatGPT in some circumstances. One thing that DeepSeek brings to the table that ChatGPT fails at: is the price. ChatGPT was developed over 3 years with around $1.5 Billion worth of training for it to reach the intelligence level it currently is at. Compared to the supposed $5 Million over 2 years used to train DeepSeek V3. The Chinese market seems to have achieved a technological feat that even American companies like Nvidia and OpenAI struggle to achieve. However, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, all of the information we have comes directly from the Chinese government, so Deepseek’s capabilities might be inflated to improve the global perception of the Chinese tech companies. On Monday, when DeepSeek was released, the stock price of Nvidia, a US chip manufacturer, dropped massively by over 20%. Another issue that people have with Deepseek is its censorship. Deepseek AI is a Chinese-based company, and as one it has deep connections with the CCP. This has led to the CCP censoring what the AI can say. For example, it will deny the Uyghur Genocide, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and even denying Taiwanese statehood, declaring it rightfully Chinese territory. This has led to the possibility of banning Deepseek in certain countries, notably the US, Taiwan, India, and other Western nations.
The Development of Deepseek shows how far Chinas tech industry has come. The US has had an AI model for a few years now, however it has been almost expected, the fact that the Chinese came out with an AI model soon after the US is a sign that the Chinese tech industry might not be as far behind the US as many people think it is. This might serve as a wakeup call for the American tech giants as well as the US government to increase their cyber defense capabilities as an AI model like Deepseek could be eventually utilized in cyberwarfare. The release of Deeepseek AI and its consequences can be related back to class via the idea of multinational corporations and the idea of National Security. Certain companies have home countries, and are generally tied closely with their home nation. This is exemplified in Deepseek due to its censorship and the fact that all Chinese companies are tied to the CCP and can be quietly influenced to due the CCP’s bidding. this can possibly transform the release of Deepseek into a national security issue for the US and other Western nations.