China’s DeepSeek Surprise

One week ago, a new and formidable challenger for OpenAI’s throne emerged. A Chinese AI start-up, DeepSeek, launched a model that appeared to match the most powerful version of ChatGPT—but, at least according to its creator, was a fraction of the cost to build. The program, called DeepSeek-R1, has incited plenty of concern: Ultrapowerful Chinese AI models are exactly what many leaders of American AI companies feared when they, and more recently President Donald Trump, have sounded alarms…