DeepSeek and AI and China
and taking over the world
When I got up on Monday and found that the NASDAQ was down 3 percent I was shocked. It wasn’t till later that I found out the market crash was all about a new AI chatbot from China called DeepSeek and that it used an algorithm that didn’t need NVIDIA GPU chips to do its data manipulation. NVIDIA was down 17.5 percent on the the day which is quite a lot considering that its capitalization is $3 trillion and it is a major part of NASDAQ.
But then the counter narratives started. It was ridiculous for DeepSeek to say that it only spent $6 million on its development: the news was pushed by a Chinese hedge fund trying to slow investment in US AI startups. Then I read that the most successful speculator in the US, Nancy Pelosi, had sold her NVIDIA a few weeks ago. Then I read that of course DeepSeek is using NVIDIA chips but can’t admit it because China is not allowed to use NVIDIA chips.
All jolly good fun, but does it mean that China is going to take over the world? There’s the famous quote attributed to Napoleon: “Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.”
I wonder if Mao was an intel agent for the US. Imagine if China had not been infected with the Commie virus and had not gone Commie and spent 30 years in the doldrums with Mao’s Great Leap Forward followed by a famine followed by ten years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. And suppose Deng Xiaoping had not been succeeded by our friend Xi Jingping who has re-rigidified China’s politics and economy.
Really, if you wanted to slow China’s awakening, and were a real intel pro, then you would have figured that a Communist regime would be just the thing to slow down China’s inevitable ascent to world hegemony.
Yes, but won’t China’s ascent inevitably lead to World War III? Probably, because you can usually rely on political elites to make stupid mistakes. Like the mistakes that created World War I and World War II. Let me count the ways.
It started with the Brits allying with France against Germany in the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Yeah, I get it; France was still mad at Germany for the Franco-Prussian War. But Britain had previously avoided alliances in Europe, preferring to stay out and then move against the aggressor of the moment. Then things were made worse with the Triple Entente between Russia, Britain and France to counter the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in 1882. I know: let’s have a jolly old war.
But hey, that wouldn’t have mattered. The Euros would have fought to a standstill in WWI, except that brilliant President Wilson sent our doughboys across to Normandy to win the war and enact reparations against Germany which created Literally Hitler which created World War II. But it made FDR the War Hero of All Time.
So, I say, with respect to China: yes, of course they are going to take over the world, but probably not militarily. Probably they will develop worldwide influence through their Belt and Road Initiative, although probably it will cause all kinds of economic problems for China because of Third World nations defaulting on their debt.
But, hey, the United States is protected by the world’s two biggest oceans. So we can sit here and say: OK, China, take over the Philippines, if you really want to. We did that a century ago and I’m not sure it did us any good, except that we had Gen. McArthur in place for WWII. Take over South America, and good luck. Take over Africa and good luck. But watch out for those Russians in Siberia. And don’t forget that India sent over Buddhism to China over 2,000 years ago, and who knows what they’ll do this time. Gotta watch out for those Indians!
Meanwhile, China, I hope youse guys can figure out how to fix your real-estate meltdown and the debt problems of all your cities and provinces.
Meanwhile, here’s China threatening to take over the world of AI with DeepSeek. Oh no! But suppose that we still need Gigawatts of baseload generation right here in the USA to power all those AI server farms. Then we need to start building nuke plants all over the US. Because wind and solar can’t provide the baseload power that server farms need.
Maybe we can put all those redundant federal bureaucrats to work on planning for new nuclear plants.