DeepSeek, AI, and the New Cold War

DeepSeek, AI, and the New Cold War

DiEM25 (2025)

Film Review

Deepseek, the Chinese version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, seems to have fallen out of the headlines. Released as free open source software (unlike OpenAI’s for-profit ChatGPT), Deepseek was developed at one-thirtieth of the cost. Its release on January 25, 2025 wiped $1 trillion in value from US tech stocks.

This video is a really interesting dialogue between former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Malaysian-based entrepreneur and economics and geopolitics commentator Arnaud Bertrand.

Both agree that China’s surprise release of Deepseek is this generation’s Sputnik moment. Based on the US ban on microchip exports to China, both the US government and Silicon Valley were counting on China being far behind the US in developing AI. According to Bertrand, the Chinese used their vast superiority in software design to build Deepseek from old fashioned microchips.

There are two versions of Deepseek: one a downloadable application to use on a computer or phone, the other an online version available at the Deepseek website. The latter collects information keystrokes and cross device uses and sends them to China. For this reason (allegedly), Italy, South Korea, Australia, New York state and the US Senate have all banned Deepseek.* As both Varoufakis and Bertrand point out, Google, Facebook and presumably ChatGPT collect exactly the same information and readily share it with the FBI, CIA and NSA.

Varoufakis and Bertrand are both excited about Deepseek, mainly because it 1) makes free open source AI accessible in the Third World and 2) undermines moves by OpenAI to use its monopoly to assist governments to surveil and control civilian populations (as Israel currently uses it in Gaza).

*See Which Countries Have Banned Deepseek and Why and Which Countries Have Banned Deepseek Already