16 Comments

I’m just glad you’re fired up

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Thanks for highlighting. The market is completely freaking out over Deepseek

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They shall learn to make their own high-end chips... since the rest of the world is *democratically "influenced"* by the Empire (of freedom and democracy, lol).

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Fascinating read! DeepSeek’s efficiency gains are impressive, but as you point out, they’re built on a foundation of substantial prior compute access—something that’s increasingly constrained by export controls. It’s also striking how much of the AI race now happens behind the scenes, with the most advanced models never seeing public release. This raises big questions about how we measure progress and maintain resilience in an era where capabilities are both diffusing and becoming more opaque. Great analysis!

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Just skimmed your article. Was curious to learn about CCP's status re AI development. Very helpful...thank you!

Your discussion about the impacts of export controls, attempts to choke off CCP development of AI prompted this memory/thought about a similar situation with the USSR. There was a saying that the Russians were deprived of the computers we had in the West, and other technological miracles...so they were forced to think! I worry that we are forcing the Chinese (who are forced by the CCP to work on AI) to think harder than they might otherwise. I also have no better solution and am NOT advocating for sharing technology with them. In fact, in my work, analytical chemistry, I'm dismayed to see that most Chinese universities have instruments at least as good and numerous as I do in the US's DOE national labs!

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Yes, democracies should maintain a leg up in the AI competition, so they can more effectively finance the genocide, and regime change operations.

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You are of course free to go work for the other side...a freedom that does not exist on the other side btw.

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How does Deepseek making its code open source affect AI industry?

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Continued antagonism between the 2 countries must be good for your substack business ?

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!

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Only took a week for the markets to digest. Deepseek just released an image model along with Qwen. The spigots are on.

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The release during Trump's first week is a good spot, but how are we 100% sure it isn't coincidental?

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That doesn't fit the 'narrative.'

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Really interesting. Thanks for writing.

This all assumes that China will not be able to create chips that are equivalent to the West’s highest end chips.

How likely is that to remain true? If they can produce their own chips how does that change your story?

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The book chip wars mentions that the time frame for reinventing current cutting edge chips would at least be 10+ years. Which is then 10 years behind the running cutting edge.

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Conquering Taiwan might narrow this gap.

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