The sudden rise of DeepSeek has been fascinating and instructive on so many levels. Just like that, it forced US-China headlines away from Trump’s tariffs, triggered a trillion-dollar bloodbath on Nasdaq, sent the volatility index (VIX) skyrocketing, rattled the US technology establishment and poked big holes in American tech giants’ justifications for sky-high valuations and closed ecosystems.

Already a shocked American financial press is wondering if this is just “AI’s Sputnik moment”, as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen put it, or a Pearl Harbor-like hit on financial markets that robbed Silicon Valley’s Mag-7 of a trillion dollars in one trading session.

And even though the broader market began its recovery shortly after the initial shockwave, America’s AI leaders, as well as the Trump administration, will wonder for a long time how China managed to pull off such a feat so quickly – and what else might be on the horizon.

Much attention has been given to the implications of........

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