Why China’s young super geeks could herald the West’s ‘darkest hour’: Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better… no wonder the world fears a ‘Sputnik’ moment
In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, which caused shock and alarm in the West.
It was generally assumed that the US was much more technologically more advanced than the Russians, and the rude awakening of the ‘Sputnik crisis’ led to the famous space trace between the two super powers.
Now a leading tech investor of Silicon Valley has warned about a new ‘Sputnik -moment’.
That is how billionaire Marc Andreessen this week described the newest breakthrough of China in the struggle to develop artificial intelligence – currently the determining problem for the technical world.
The release of a cheap but remarkably powerful new generative AI platform by a Chinese technology company called Deepseek has proved to be just as disturbing for American self-confidence as the appearance of a Soviet spacecraft in a job around the earth.
Andreessen, a large donor from Donald Trump, described the software – a ‘chatbot’ with which people can have conversations – as’ one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs that he had ever seen. And many people agree with him.
A lot is needed to wipe the self-satisfied grin of the faces of the multi-billionaire bosses of Silicon Valley, but Deepseek has succeeded in rattling many seriously if his new AI model and the amazing claims have made about it A massacre on Wall Street causes a stunning $ 1 trillion (£ 800 billion) on Monday from the value of the shares of large American technology companies.
One of them, microchip manufacturer NVIDIA – who was only crowned last year as the world’s most valuable company because of the key role in delivering the chips that were supposedly needed for AI – almost 17 percent fell in value (the equivalent of $ 589 billion or £ 490 billion) in the largest one -day fall for a single company in American history.
Liang Wenfeng, the founder of the Chinese AI Startup Deepseek (depicted on the right) when he was younger
![Why China's young super geeks could herald the West's 'darkest hour': Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better... no wonder the world fears a 'Sputnik' moment 1 Wenseng, who just turned 40 by Chinese media accounts, launched his app in the United States on the same day as the inauguration of Donald Trump](https://nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Why-Chinas-young-super-geeks-could-herald-the-Wests-darkest.jpeg)
Wenseng, who just turned 40 by Chinese media accounts, launched his app in the United States on the same day as the inauguration of Donald Trump
![Why China's young super geeks could herald the West's 'darkest hour': Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better... no wonder the world fears a 'Sputnik' moment 2 The AI assistant of Deepseek would perform for a fraction of the price on the par with chatgpt](https://nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1738114115_713_Why-Chinas-young-super-geeks-could-herald-the-Wests-darkest.jpg)
The AI assistant of Deepseek would perform for a fraction of the price on the par with chatgpt
Why the panic? China has crushed the American certainty about which country the world will lead in the development of AI.
Deepseek-Rente by Liang Wenfeng, a Nerdy 39-year-old Chinese billionaire hedge finance with a terrible haircut-has unveiled an AI system that, with certain comments, corresponds to the performance so far of the most advanced chatbots of America, such as the newest version of chatgpt.
And worrying for Silicon Valley and Wall Street, Deepseek says that it has shown that cheap AI can be made without using expensive American technology.
The question of those who wanted to try the chatbot of Deepseek (which is accessible via an iPhone app, or just on the internet) was huge, although it was difficult to register for it yesterday, with the website of the company, the large-scale malignant malignant debt attack on his services.
President Trump warned that Deepseek should be a ‘wake-up call’ for American industry.
It is particularly chatter for him because he talked about Silicon Valley’s AI Brilliance, recently an initiative of $ 500 billion announced with the name Stargate to develop the technology.
Sam Altman, boss of OpenAi, the leading American artificial intelligence developer, tried to see the positive side: he called the Chinese rival ‘impressive’ and claimed that it was ‘stimulating to have a new competitor’.
This was quite a volte face for a man who only characterized AI development last summer as a ‘race’ between democracy and authoritarianism.
![Why China's young super geeks could herald the West's 'darkest hour': Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better... no wonder the world fears a 'Sputnik' moment 3 President Donald Trump has branded the Chinese AI-StartUp Deepseek as a 'wake-up call' for American tech-Titans after fear of unrest in the AI Gold Rush rocked Wall Street](https://nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1738114116_918_Why-Chinas-young-super-geeks-could-herald-the-Wests-darkest.jpeg)
President Donald Trump has branded the Chinese AI-StartUp Deepseek as a ‘wake-up call’ for American tech-Titans after fear of unrest in the AI Gold Rush rocked Wall Street
AI is already anchored in our daily lives. It is used in everything, from mobile phones and Amazon’s ‘virtual home assistant’ Alexa to delivery of drones and cars without a driver.
Skeptics have warned that AI is ridiculously overhyped, but others say that it can cause a revolution in all kinds of services, including health care and defense, albeit against the potential costs of millions of jobs of people.
Deepseek is a so -called large language model that uses the enormous series of information on the internet to make super intelligent computers that can perform better than people.
The chatbot of Deepseek is praised as a huge leap forward because it is said that it achieves the same results as the equivalent AI models in Silicon Valley, but cheaper, fast and more efficient.
It also uses less energy (an important factor in view of the fact that AI requires enormous computing power), and requires less and less advanced chips than those who drive the AI that is developed in the US.
While America’s OpenAi says that it has issued $ 1 billion (£ 800 million) ‘training’ chatgpt, for example, Deepseek reportedly spent less than $ 6 million (£ 4.8 million) on its last chatbot.
And although some advanced American models charge users, the chatbot of Deepseek is ‘open source’, which means that everyone around the world can use it for free. No wonder there is such a question.
China has said that it aims to become the world leader in AI in 2030, but many in the US believed that Washington had put an end to that idea when the Biden administration in 2022 started the checks of exports of powerful chips to China to put.
![Why China's young super geeks could herald the West's 'darkest hour': Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better... no wonder the world fears a 'Sputnik' moment 4 The new Chinese chatbot was launched last week and quickly caught up with its rival chatgpt to become the downloaded free app in Apple's US App Store](https://nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1738114117_591_Why-Chinas-young-super-geeks-could-herald-the-Wests-darkest.jpeg)
The new Chinese chatbot was launched last week and quickly caught up with its rival chatgpt to become the downloaded free app in Apple’s US App Store
However, it seems that Deepseek not only killed those checks by finding a Maas in the American regulations with which they could continue to buy advanced chips before Washington finally closed the door.
It has also adopted a policy to hire super -clear young computering engineers.
Deepseek’s boss, Mr. Liang, who earned his fortune with the help of AI to recognize good investments on stock markets, is of the opinion that inexperienced employees ‘think outside the framework’ more often.
So it turned out because those employees developed a way to streamline the traditional, very time-consuming method to build an AI-Chatbot by processing any last Gobbet of information on the internet.
Instead, the Deepseek system relies on knowing where you should look for answers online – a process that can take a little longer but is much more efficient.
For many, especially those who instinctively distrust something that comes from China and seems to be designed to damage business rivals in the US, the amazing success of deep chat sounds a bit too good to be true.
Some suspect that the Chinese government gave financial support to Deepseek, founded in 2023, although experts who have looked at the company’s data, say that the company has really found a way to save costs.
It has also been claimed that the company was not entirely fair about the microchips it used, because it succeeded in storing tens of thousands of the advanced American Nvidia chips before those restrictions came into effect.
![Why China's young super geeks could herald the West's 'darkest hour': Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better... no wonder the world fears a 'Sputnik' moment 5 The arrival of Deepseek destabilized the AI market and ensured that the US stock market bleed $ 1 trillion on Monday](https://nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1738114118_897_Why-Chinas-young-super-geeks-could-herald-the-Wests-darkest.jpeg)
The arrival of Deepseek destabilized the AI market and ensured that the US stock market bleed $ 1 trillion on Monday
![Why China's young super geeks could herald the West's 'darkest hour': Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better... no wonder the world fears a 'Sputnik' moment 6 OpenAI CEO SAM Altman wrote that R1, one of the different models of Deepseek that has been released in recent weeks, is 'an impressive model, especially around what they can deliver for the price'](https://nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1738114119_102_Why-Chinas-young-super-geeks-could-herald-the-Wests-darkest.jpeg)
OpenAI CEO SAM Altman wrote that R1, one of the different models of Deepseek that has been released in recent weeks, is ‘an impressive model, especially around what they can deliver for the price’
Perhaps, however, it is the most powerful reason to worry about the AI of Deepseek that the China can offer a hugely productive way to spy on the West.
According to a Beijing Act from 2017, all Chinese organizations are obliged to ‘participate in national intelligence efforts’ fact that the opposition of Washington has hardened against the Chinese video distribution of gigantic Tiktok (although the company has refused our user data to Chinese government to send).
Since earlier this month, the popular service has been ordered under a judicial prohibition in the US, because of the concern about the government, it is the private information of users and passed on it to the communist regime, so that US national security is considerably weakened.
The Deepseek chatbot itself collects an enormous amount of information and sends it back to China, where the head office is in the city of Hangzhou, one of the technical hubs of the country.
So much admits that the company freely admits: according to the English Deepseek Privacy Policy: “We store the information we collect in secure servers in the People’s Republic of China.”
In the meantime, even the information that Deepseek sends back in the other direction has a pro-Beijing bias. Users have already discovered that the chatbot refuses to answer politically sensitive questions, such as those about the Tiananmen Square-Bloedbad from 1989 or President Xi Jinping, while at the same time a Pro-Beijing shine on other controversies such as the mistreatment of the Uyghur-Etnic minority .
In China, Deepseek is praised as a national triumph that could change the fate of the country – and that Silicon Valley stabbed in its ‘darkest hour’.
Yet the new AI platform may not be everything that it seems, and like the Soviets that are beaten in the moon in 1969 -China may not win the AI race.
But just like Sputnik, Deepseek has yielded a short, sharp shock for the idea of the American ‘exceptionalism’ that his new president and the Tech Titans who embraced him, love for trumpet.