It is hard to estimate how much it is "didn't care", "didn't know" or "did it" I think. Rather pointless unless there are public party discussion about it to read.

It's early innings, and supporting the open source community could be viewed by the CCP as an effective way to undermine the US's lead in AI.

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

I really doubt there was any intention behind it at all. I bet deepseek themselves are surprised at the impact this is having, and probably regret releasing so much information into the open.

It will be assumed by the American policy establishment that this represents what the CCP doesn't consider important, meaning that they have even better stuff in store. It will also be assumed that this was timed to take a dump on Trump's announcement, like you said.

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.

I mean, it's a strategic asset in the sense that it's already devalued a lot of the American tech companies because they're so heavily invested in AI. Just look at NVDA today.