The Chinese have moved up a lot of value chains, and with some of them, it’s on top. That scares the bejesus out of American politicians (at least, the ones not bribed by China) and bureaucrats. From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.su:
The Empire of Chaos will not take the competition lightly. The Middle Kingdom is unfazed – and ready to rock’n roll.
When President Xi Jinping hosted a recent – rare – meeting with an array of Chinese tech superstars, including a “rehabilitated” Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, he urged them to “show their talent”, code for going for broke in the tech war with the U.S.
It was no wonder that young Liang Wenfeng, founder of AI sensation DeepSeek, was among the guests.
DeepSeek threw not only Silicon Valley but the whole somewhat paranoid U.S. national security ecosystem completely off balance. Yet Beijing’s emphasis is not subversion, but a sound drive towards building an AI system totally independent from U.S. monopolistic pressure and Nvidia products. Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent will likely align their infrastructure with DeepSeek.
This process is perfectly synchronized with the Made in China 2025 project, which has already propelled China to the leadership position in several sectors – from electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels to smart grids and advanced manufacturing. The final breakthroughs will be on top semiconductors and aerospace.
It’s now common knowledge that DeepSeek’s development was not a product of Silicon Valley labs showered with billions of dollars of research funds. Liang Wenfeng himself revealed it: “I won’t lie, our AI was created on the basis of Soviet developments – the OGAS system of Academician Glushkov.”
The wonders of History: a Soviet marvel auctioned off for a pittance, $15,000 in 1995 possibly because it was considered worthless, is now the backbone of China’s new digital revolution.
Physics heavyweight Quantum Bird, formerly with the CERN in Geneva, is adamant: “The Americans lost the plot. It’s all about models employing less computing power and less data. Nvidia high-performance GPUs costing $40,000 consume too much energy. Then there’s financial speculation. Raspberry Pi [a small single-board computer], the size of a credit card and with a simple processor, costing $50 for students, they may run DeepSeek, consuming less energy than a cellphone.”
Keep it simple with an old Soviet model?
Outdone by the workers utopia should set off alarm bells.
Good luck powering the AI Wakanda with old Three Mile Islands, I’m sure that will be an easy sell.
This just in from Dead 60s:
Soul Survivor