By: Vijay Prashad

The fragility of U.S. power was clear when a small Chinese startup released the DeepSeek machine learning program. The U.S. stock market Nasdaq shuddered, with technology stocks collapsing. This collapse is not a minor matter for the U.S. economy. During the post-COVID-19 inflation (2021), foreign investors began to slow down their purchase of U.S. debt. Then, after the U.S. seized $600 billion in Russia’s foreign exchange assets (2022), many central banks moved their own holdings away from the long-arm jurisdiction of the United States. U.S. Treasury bills languished.

Financiers in the U.S. are now nervous. In 2024, foreign investors put over $1 trillion in technology stocks into U.S. stock markets. With the DeepSeek downturn, will these investors move away from what now appears to be a mirage of possibilities? With U.S. President Donald Trump hellbent on a tariff war with the world, and with the lack of appetite among foreign investors to hold U.S. Treasury bills, who will fund the astronomical debt of the United States? Will the United States fall headfirst into a financial vortex?

Would it be possible for the United States to take the emergence of DeepSeek as a warning and invest its wealth into the creation of new technologies and infrastructure to restart a faltering economy? Will technology billionaires put the massive profits of their companies into research and development rather than usurping other companies to give them influence over society? It would be valuable if the media in the United States took these questions seriously and held debates across the length and breadth of society. Instead, the U.S. is now captivated by much shallower discussions: What do you think of Donald Trump? Should the U.S. capture Greenland? How many more migrants should the U.S. border patrol deport? That is the range of discussion. There is no broad consensus that asks the U.S. billionaire class to put its wealth into an economy that is sputtering on the fumes of its past.

During the administration of Joe Biden, the U.S. tried to secure public funds for infrastructure. The American........

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