The White House is reportedly concerned with China’s AI success and is looking to slow its progress in the industry
US officials are taking steps to crack down on China’s DeepSeek AI and its support from chip-making giant Nvidia, the New York Times has reported, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
DeepSeek’s January release shook the foundations of the artificial intelligence industry and rattled the US stock market, heating up the AI race between China and the US. Unlike its main rival – OpenAI’s ChatGPT – DeepSeek’s open-source deep reasoning model was made freely available, quickly making it the most downloaded app on Apple’s and Google’s stores. The model’s development also reportedly cost a fraction of what US companies have been spending on such technologies.
On Wednesday, the NYT reported that US President Donald Trump and his administration have been weighing penalties that would block DeepSeek from buying American technologies and are debating banning US users from accessing the Chinese AI.
Earlier this week, Nvidia announced that the US government had blocked the sale of some of its AI chips to China without a license and would demand such licenses for future sales.
US congressional leaders have been looking to further crack down on Nvidia’s chip deliveries to China and on Wednesday opened an investigation into the company’s sale of chips across Asia.
The main focus of the probe is said to be to determine if Nvidia knowingly provided DeepSeek with critical technology to develop AI, which would be a violation of American rules established under former US President Joe Biden.
A spokesman for Nvidia, John Rizzo, has since stated that the company has followed the US government’s directions on what products it can sell and where it can sell them “to the letter,” and that it is committed to protecting and enhancing US national security.
Following DeepSeek’s launch, several countries, including the US, South Korea, Italy, and Australia, have imposed bans and restrictions on the chatbot, citing national security and data privacy concerns.
In February, US lawmakers proposed legislation that would ban the app from being installed on any government-owned devices after cybersecurity experts claimed that the program contained hidden code capable of transmitting sensitive user data to China. Washington has previously accused Beijing of using its apps to attempt to access sensitive data in other countries.
China has dismissed the accusation as politically motivated “ideological discrimination,” asserting that the government does not require enterprises or individuals to collect or store data illegally.
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