Too Late, US Commerce Nominee Calls Deepseek A Technology 'Thief'

1/31/2025 7:02:18 PM

(MENAFN- Asia Times) US Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick has accused DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm, of stealing US technology and getting around US export controls to obtain high-end Nvidia chips.

In the nomination hearing with the US Senate on January 29, Lutnick said DeepSeek could create its AI models“dirt cheap” because it was able to purchase a large quantity of Nvidia chips and steal data from Meta's open platform.

“I take a very jaundiced view of China,” he said.“They only think about themselves and seek to harm us, and so we need to protect ourselves. We need to drive our innovation, and we need to stop helping them. Meta's open platform let DeepSeek rely on it. Nvidia's chips – which they bought tons of, and they found their ways around [export controls] – drive their DeepSeek model. It's got to end.”

Lutnick said he will coordinate and empower the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS)'s export controls to stop China from using American tools to compete with the US.

Beijing has so far not responded to Lutnick's comments as it is celebrating the Chinese New Year from January 28 to February 4.

David Sacks, former PayPal Chief Operating Officer and an advisor to the White House on AI and cryptocurrency matters, told Fox News that there was“substantial evidence” that DeepSeek used a method called“distillation” to extract data from Microsoft's OpenAI models for its own use.

IT experts said“distillation” or “knowledge distillation” is commonly used in AI training. It is a technique where outputs from a larger AI model are used to train and improve a smaller one.

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