How does Beijing view DeepSeek?
DeepSeek’s success has already been noticed in China’s top political circles.
Last week on the day DeepSeek released a new product to the public, company founder Liang attended a closed-door symposium hosted by Chinese premier Li Qiang, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Liang’s presence at the gathering is potentially a sign that DeepSeek’s success could be important to Beijing’s policy goal of overcoming Washington’s export controls and achieving self-sufficiency in strategic industries like AI.
The “Sputnik” backdrop?
Behind the drama over DeepSeek’s technical capabilities is a debate within the US over how best to compete with China on AI.
“DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” said venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in a Sunday post on social platform X, referencing the 1957 satellite launch that set off a Cold War space exploration race between the Soviet Union and the US.
Andreessen, who has advised Trump on tech policy, has warned that over regulation of the AI industry by the US government will hinder American companies and enable China to get ahead.
But the attention on DeepSeek also threatens to undermine a key strategy of US foreign policy in recent years to restrict the sale of American-designed AI semiconductors to China. Some experts on US-China relations don’t think that is an accident.
“The technology innovation is real, but the timing of the release is political in nature,” said Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Allen compared DeepSeek’s announcement last week to US-sanctioned Chinese company Huawei’s release of a new phone during diplomatic discussions over Biden administration export controls in 2023.
“Trying to show that the export controls are futile or counterproductive is a really important goal of Chinese foreign policy right now,” Allen said.
Trump signed an order on his first day in office last week that said his administration would “identify and eliminate loopholes in existing export controls”, signalling that he is likely to continue and harden Biden’s approach.
