Gordon Campbell: DeepSeek, And China’s Inexorable Rise

The week’s big story has been about China’s DeepSeek low-cost AI model. Because DeepSeek requires fewer advanced chips, its advent has had a huge impact on the fortunes of US chip-making giant, Nvidia – which immediately lost $600 billion of its value, making that the biggest one day loss in the history of the US stock market. Nvidia has since clawed back 5% of its prior value. Still, the advent of DeepSeek as a low cost market disruptor has been described by venture capitalist Mark Andreessen as “AI’s Sputnik moment” and if you don’t know what that means, ask your grandparents.