you are assuming that what DeepSeek achieved can be reasonably easily replicated by other companies. then the question is when all big techs and tons of startups in China and the US are involved, how come none of those companies succeeded?
deepseek is unique.
It think they think American engineering excellence was due to neoliberal inginuenity visavi the USSR, not the engineers and the transfer of academic legacy from generation to generation.
I see two possibilities here, either that the CCP is not that all-reaching as we think, or that the value of the technology isn't critical, and that the release was further cleared with the CCP and maybe even timed to come right after Trump's announcement of American AI supremacy.
In a way, their strategy could be:
1) Let the US invest $1 trillion in R&D
2) Support the open source community such that their capability to replicate these models only marginally lags the private sector
3) When R&D costs are more manageable, lean in and play catch up
And it did a great job. Nvidia stock's sunk, and investors are going to be asking if it's really that smart to give American AI companies their money when the Chinese can do something similar for significantly less money.