Welcome to the President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boy's Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is DeepSeek upends AI competition.

With me to discuss how the release last month of a new artificial intelligence program by the Chinese firm Deep Seek has disrupted the Convention of Wisdom about AI, as well as to discuss

the state of the U.S. China technology race is Adam Siegel.

Adam is the IRA-A. Lippman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security

and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program here at the Council.

From 2023 to 2024, he was a senior advisor in the State Department's Bureau of Cyberspace in Digital Policy.

An expert on national security, technology development in Chinese foreign policy,

Adam is the author of three books, including The Hacked World Order,

How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, maneuver, and manipulate in the digital age.

Late last year, he coered a piece for cFR.org on artificial intelligence priorities for the next administration.

Adam, thank you for coming back on the president's inbox.

Glad to be here.

Okay, let's begin with the big question, Adam.

Help me understand why Deep Seek's release of a free chat box app made such a big splash in the tech world.

So I think we can break it into at least three categories where Deep Seek shook a number of

assumptions.

How we think AI is developing,

U.S.-China tech competition and where the two sides are,

and tools, effective tools, that the U.S. can use to try to slow China down.

And so this announcement that Deep Seek has a reasoning model

that's competitive with the U.S.

...