US-China tech war

DeepSeek reminds tech superpowers about the changing global technological landscape.

OpenAI’s top researcher-turned-whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26 last year with a gunshot hole in the head. The previous month, he alleged that OpenAI had violated US copyright law while developing its popular ChatGPT online chatbot. Then, on January 20, DeepSeek, the Chinese AI prodigy, sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley by releasing a powerful language model rivalling OpenAI’s ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost and computational power. This exposed a vulnerability in the American narrative of technological dominance. While accusations of “ AI distilling ” and data theft fly back and forth, a more profound question emerges: Is the dragon on its way to surpassing the US as the global tech leader?