INTELLICUREAN

THE WIRE CHINA (February 5, 2025): Last December, the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek reported training a GPT-4-level model for just $5.6 million, challenging assumptions about the resources needed for frontier AI development. This perceived cost reduction, and DeepSeek’s cut-rate pricing for its advanced reasoning model R1, have left tech stocks plunging and sparked a debate on the effectiveness of U.S. export controls on AI chips.

Select Committee Chairman Moolenaar and Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi’s letter to National Security Advisor Waltz on DeepSeek. *Credit: Select Committee*

Some argue that DeepSeek’s efficiency breakthroughs mean the controls have backfired and must be lifted. But this view overlooks the bigger picture: DeepSeek’s success in fact underscores the need for smarter export controls. DeepSeek exploited gaps in current controls, such as exports of chips to China that matched U.S. performance despite the initial October 2022 rules, chip smuggling, inadequate oversight on chip manufacturers like TSMC, and slow regulatory updates that enabled stockpiling.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE (February 6, 2025): In the months since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November, policymakers in Beijing have been looking to the next four years of U.S.-Chinese relations with trepidation. Beijing has been expecting the Trump administration to pursue tough policies toward China, potentially escalating the two countries’ trade war, tech war, and confrontation over Taiwan. The prevailing wisdom is that China must prepare for storms ahead in its dealings with the United States.

Trump’s imposition of ten percent tariffs on all Chinese goods this week seemed to justify those worries. China retaliated swiftly, announcing its own tariffs on certain U.S. goods, as well as restrictions on exports of critical minerals and an antimonopoly investigation into the U.S.-based company Google. But even though Beijing has such tools at its disposal, its ability to outmaneuver Washington in a tit-for-tat exchange is limited by the United States’ relative power and large trade deficit with China. Chinese policymakers, aware of the problem, have been planning more than trade war tactics. Since Trump’s first term, they have been adapting their approach to the United States, and they have spent the past three months further developing their strategy to anticipate, counter, and minimize the damage of Trump’s volatile policymaking. As a result of that planning, a broad effort to shore up China’s domestic economy and foreign relations has been quietly underway.

INTELLICUREAN

Foreign Policy: ‘DeepSeek’s Lesson – America Needs Smarter Export Controls’

Foreign Affairs Essays: ‘China’s Trump Strategy’

Essays & Reviews – For The Intellectually Curious