Paul Gigot interviews Journal columnist Holman Jenkins. 

DeepSeek’s new AI model is causing deep consternation from Silicon Valley to Washington. Few would have predicted that a little-known Chinese startup with a couple of hundred homegrown engineers would be able to release a frontier AI model rivaling the capabilities of America’s best and biggest tech companies – reportedly at a fraction of the cost and computational power.  

Experts are hotly debating just how many and which type of chips DeepSeek used and whether the company stockpiled them or circumvented U.S. export controls. But the release and viral adoption of a Chinese AI competitor model has already rattled markets, highlighted the urgent competition for global brainpower, and caused some to ask whether all those billions that U.S. tech companies have spent buying chips and building data centers built a competitive moat or a Maginot line. 

This moment is game on, not game over. U.S. researchers are already reverse engineering the model and no doubt will be applying DeepSeek’s clever engineering advances to accelerate improvements here at home. But the challenge for the United States goes far beyond engineering. Technology, economics and geopolitics are intersecting in new ways, and seizing the future requires understanding the future. 

TOP REPUBLICAN MOVES TO RESTRICT AI EXPORTS AMID CONCERNS OVER CHINESE TECH

Today, a principal foreign policy challenge for the nation is harnessing emerging technologies and understanding their implications faster and better than our adversaries. Technology has always driven geopolitics, from Roman aqueducts to nuclear weapons. But this moment is different: Never have so many transformational technologies changed so much so fast. 

China's DeepSeek AI has muddled markets and concerned American policymakers that the US is losing ground on its adversaries. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)

Glimpses of the future are already here. 

Generative AI is writing much of the world’s computer code and is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the global economy annually – equivalent to the GDP of the United........

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