Indian Strategic Studies: 02/07/25

7 February 2025

Chips, China, and a Lot of Money: The Factors Driving the DeepSeek AI Turmoil

Matt Sheehan and Sam Winter-Levy

Why is DeepSeek causing global technology shockwaves?

Matt Sheehan: DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that recently released a series of very impressive generative AI models. One of those models, DeepSeek R1, is a “reasoning model” that takes its time to think through an extended chain of logic before it gives an answer. This type of reasoning is a relatively new paradigm that was pioneered by OpenAI last year, and it is viewed by many as the most promising way forward for AI research. In terms of performance, DeepSeek’s new model is roughly on par with OpenAI’s o1 model from last September.

The “reckoning” here comes from how DeepSeek did it: quickly, cheaply, and openly. DeepSeek had finished an initial version of R1 just a couple months after OpenAI’s release, far faster than Chinese companies were able to catch up to U.S. models in previous years. Perhaps most shocking was that DeepSeek was able to generate this performance using far less computing power—a key input for training a model—than U.S. companies. That extraordinary efficiency is likely a knock-on effect of U.S. export controls on chips: Chinese companies have been forced to get very creative with their limited computing resources. And finally, DeepSeek released its model in a relatively open source way, allowing anyone with a laptop and an internet connection to download it for free. That has thrown into doubt lots of assumptions about business models for AI companies and led to the turmoil in U.S. stock markets.

Sam Winter-Levy: Just to give you a sense of DeepSeek’s efficiency, the company claims it trained its model for less than $6 million, using only about 2,000 chips. That’s an order of magnitude less money than what Meta, for example, spent on training its latest system, which used more than 16,000 chips. Now DeepSeek’s cost estimate almost certainly only captures the marginal cost: It ignores their expenditures on building the data centers, buying the chips in the first place, and hiring a large technical team. But regardless, it’s clear that DeepSeek managed to train a highly capable model more efficiently than its U.S. competitors.

China Makes Rare-Earth Discovery: 'This Changes Everything'

Micah McCartney

The discovery of an enormous rare-earth deposit in southwestern China will strengthen the country's stranglehold on this strategically vital resource and fuel its high-tech ambitions.

Newsweek has reached out to the China Geological Society and U.S. Geological Survey with emailed requests for comment.

Why It Matters

Rare-earth elements (REEs) are essential to a range of high-tech applications, from electric vehicles and smartphones to radar and guided-missile systems. China controls some 70 percent of worldwide rare earth output and over 90 percent of refining capacity.

The U.S. imports nearly all its rare-earth elements, with China supplying 72 percent between 2019 and 2022, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Washington views Beijing's dominance—and its willingness to ban exports of critical elements such as gallium amid the great tech war—as a critical threat to national security.

What To Know

The high-volume reserve of rare-earth elements discovered in the Honghe region of Yunnan Province is estimated to contain 470,000 tons of rare earth elements, state media cited the China Geological Survey as saying last week.

The Tech Revolution and Irregular Warfare: Leveraging Commercial Innovation for Great Power Competition

Seth G. Jones

U.S. adversaries are developing capabilities and taking actions that pose a growing threat to the U.S. military and intelligence community across the globe. China, for example, is investing significantly in artificial intelligence (AI) such as DeepSeek, quantum computing, and other emerging technologies, as well as improving capabilities in areas such as information and influence operations, long-range strike, autonomous systems, cyber, and space. China can leverage an economy that has greater purchasing power parity ($31.2 trillion) than the United States ($24.7 trillion), a situation that the United States did not face with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.1

China’s military-civil fusion (军民融合) development strategy—also called national strategic integration—has created a way for the government to direct and facilitate cooperation with the commercial sector and fuse China’s defense industrial base with its civilian industrial base.2 China has also cooperated with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other countries to develop greater military, intelligence, and dual-use capabilities that will complicate U.S. military and intelligence activities overseas.3

This analysis focuses on one specific area of competition: actions and capabilities below the threshold of conventional warfare, or what this analysis refers to as irregular warfare. As used here, irregular warfare refers to activities short of conventional and nuclear warfare that are designed to expand a country’s influence and legitimacy. These activities include information operations, cyber operations, support to state and non-state partners, covert action, and economic coercion.

America Must Untangle Its Defense-Industrial Base from China

Gary Roughead

Being tough on China is the topic that has bridged our partisan divide in recent years, generating an environment where each side claimed to be tougher. In confirmation hearings, President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees voiced their intent to take countering China to a new level. Secretary of State Marco Rubio opined that, without changing course, “In less than ten years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not.”

Reliance on Chinese manufacturing is staggering, and it’s not just the United States that is dependent on the entangled web of Chinese manufacturing and logistic reach. China has become a seemingly indispensable link in global supply chains. COVID-19 was a case in point and a wake-up call as Chinese manufacturers were able to surge production of medical supplies to meet demand.

As sobering as medical supply chain shortcomings were, a potentially crippling entanglement with China is that of our defense and homeland security needs. If that dependence remains, our national security is at risk.

In early January, the Department of Defense added dozens of Chinese companies to its list of companies with ties to the Chinese military. The list, from video game makers to battery manufacturers, suggests the Pentagon has cast a wide net. Under the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department is banned from doing business with these companies starting in June 2026.

Chinese Humanoid Robot Developments: Benign or Malignant?

Christian D. Orr

What’s the deal with China’s humanoid robots? As I write these words in January 2025, the notion of killer humanoid robots still (thankfully) remains within the realm of science fiction, particularly box office blockbuster motion pictures such as I, Robot and The Terminator franchise (the latter has also inspired the name for a certain Russian armored fighting vehicle).

However, that sci-fi scenario could conceivably become science reality—especially if certain Chinese tech firms have their way.

The Basics on Chinese Robots

The inspiration for this article comes from a January 29, 2025, LinkedIn post by robotics entrepreneur Peter Kappes, which reads as follows:

“Unitree Robotics is always impressing, as China increasingly integrates humanoids into people’s lives.

They have fused Chinese traditional culture with Unitree Robotics, with their robots dancing and twirling silk handkerchiefs in celebration of Chinese New Year.”

Speaking of that Chinese New Year celebration, Kappes’s post includes a video, 2 minutes and 38 seconds in length depicting highlights from the event; the stage production, presented in front of an enthralled live audience, is indeed an impressive spectacle to behold.

The Tragedy of Zhou Enlai

MINXIN PEI

Among the architects of Chinese communism, Zhou Enlai’s role in both the 1949 revolution and the establishment of the new totalitarian regime was arguably second only to that of Mao Zedong.

Zhou influenced each stage of the Chinese Revolution: from the bloody battles for survival waged against the Kuomintang (Nationalist) government in the late 1920s and the mid-1930s to the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), and throughout the Maoist era (1949-76), during which he served as China’s premier.

But despite his long and illustrious political career, Zhou’s true character has remained shrouded in a thick mist of official propaganda. His public image, even in the West, is that of a selfless, gracious intellectual whose unmatched administrative skills were indispensable to building Chinese socialism under harsh conditions. This portrayal, of course, aligns closely with what the Communist Party of China (CPC) wants the Chinese people to believe – even today.

In some ways, Zhou’s legacy has fared better than Mao’s in the decades since their deaths. After all, the enormity of Mao’s crimes against the Chinese people has made it impossible for the CPC to portray him as an infallible leader. The most generous assessment of Mao, offered by his successor Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s, was that Mao’s actions were “70% good and 30% bad.”

Securing Ukraine May Require Western Forces

William Courtney, Michael Cecire, John Hoehn &Hunter Stoll

If the war in Ukraine winds down to a ceasefire, Kyiv may need Western combat power to ensure its security. Lightly armed peacekeepers could not help Ukraine deter and defend against renewed Russian aggression. A better model may be the U.S.-led forces in South Korea, which like Ukraine faces a substantial hostile threat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that Ukraine does not deserve to be an independent state. North Korea's dictatorship has a similar attitude toward South Korea. Even if a ceasefire in Ukraine is achieved, Putin's Russia may not abandon its revanchist aims. North Korea presents a similar threat to South Korea.

In 1953, the Korean War evolved into an armistice—an indefinite ceasefire. Both sides withdrew forces over a mile back from the ceasefire line. The armistice was put in place, but a “final peaceful settlement” was never achieved. To this day powerful U.S.-led United Nations Forces bolster South Korea's defenses.

Even if a ceasefire in Ukraine is achieved, Putin's Russia may not abandon its revanchist aims. North Korea presents a similar threat to South Korea.

Space Capabilities to Support Military Operations in the European Theatre

Alexander K. Bollfrass, Ester Sabatino & Chelsey Wiley

1. Lessons From Ukraine for Europe’s Military Use of Space

Space data and services are increasingly an integral part of modern warfare. Earth observation (EO), intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), and satellite communication (SATCOM) can assist a broad range of military tasks, supporting geolocation, targeting and battle-damage assessment, among others. Space further enables other military actions that rely on space-based data and services, such as the use of GPS-guided weapons. The growing military importance of space is also reflected by the growing number of space-related organisations focused on national security or defence tasks. NATO recognised space as a military domain in 2019, implying that conflicts might affect both ground- and spacebased space capabilities and that an attack in the space domain may lead to the invocation of the Alliance’s Article 5 collective-defence clause.

The targeting of satellite networks has been prominent in Russia’s war against Ukraine and represents a major change in the way space has been regarded as it pertains to military operations. Since Operation Desert Storm space systems have played an important role in supporting military operations, but in the last decade or so it has become a domain in which military operations can be performed.2 This means that in addition to supporting the military in the collection of ISR, EO, PNT and SATCOM, militaries can target space and space-based capabilities of adversaries to disable their use of space. An initial example of the use of space to perform military operations is the GPS interferences registered in Syria.3

Gabbard’s Refusal to Call Snowden a Traitor Draws Pushback at Hearing to Be Intel Chief

Brian Bennett

If the Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, she will be the person briefing him each day on the nation’s most closely held secrets. At her confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senators from both parties expressed serious concerns about whether they trust Gabbard in that crucial role.

While Gabbard, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii and U.S. Army Reserve officer with no background in intelligence, faced questions about controversial moments in her past—her 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, her expressing skepticism of U.S. intelligence assessments about Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and her criticism of how the intelligence community collects data on U.S. citizens—many Senators homed in on her praise of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden as a way to question her overall judgment.

In 2013, Snowden fled the country after removing 1.5 million classified documents about military and intelligence programs, initially traveling to Hong Kong to share some of the files with journalists and eventually seeking asylum in Russia. Snowden leaked thousands of documents that revealed a broad collection of American telephone records by the U.S. government and other secret programs, prompting a national debate about civil liberties. Gabbard has called Snowden “brave.” Senators suggested Gabbard’s support for someone who so famously leaked classified documents would undermine her credibility as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence.

Good Optics But Empty Pockets - Analysis

Daniel C. Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, a boon for Netanyahu’s fractured standing back home. The two leaders meet against the backdrop of critically important yet shaky cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon. Having pushed the parties to reach agreement on the cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza and having succeeded in getting an extension for Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Trump now owns them both, and they are his to manage and oversee.

While the atmosphere of the visit will almost certainly be positive, it will mask a relationship between two leaders who are not terribly fond of one another and who certainly don’t trust each other. Both recall the contretemps that surrounded the last months of Trump’s first term as president. Netanyahu, urged on by the then-U.S. ambassador, considered annexing parts of the West Bank, believing that was consistent with Trump’s so-called deal of the century. But Trump wanted nothing of it, especially in the run-up to his reelection campaign. To add to the problem, Trump was later angered by Netanyahu’s congratulatory call to Joe Biden after he won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and his unwillingness to embrace Trump’s false narrative of a stolen vote.

Elon Musk’s Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency

Makena Kelly & Zoë Schiffer

Elon Musk’s minions—from trusted sidekicks to random college students and former Musk company interns—have taken over the General Services Administration, a critical government agency that manages federal offices and technology. Already, the team is attempting to use White House security credentials to gain unusual access to GSA tech, deploying a suite of new AI software, and recreating the office in X’s image, according to leaked documents obtained by WIRED.

Some of the same people who helped Musk take over Twitter more than two years ago are now registered as official GSA employees. Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter HQ as an unofficial member of Musk’s transition team, has high-level agency access and an official government email address, according to documents viewed by WIRED. Hollander’s husband, Steve Davis, also slept in the office. He has now taken on a leading role in Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Thomas Shedd, the recently installed director of the Technology Transformation Services within GSA, worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years. Edward Coristine, who previously interned at Neuralink, has been onboarded along with Ethan Shaotran, a Harvard senior who is developing his own OpenAI-backed scheduling assistant and participated in an xAI hackathon.

The Clash Over Civilizations

Ian Morris

Josephine Quinn, a professor of ancient history at Cambridge University, is on a mission to take down what she calls civilizational thinking, which “embeds an assumption of enduring and meaningful difference between human societies that does real damage.” Seeing the world in terms of distinct civilizations—Eastern and Western or Muslim and Christian—dooms people to misunderstanding because it “is not peoples that make history, but people.”

This kind of thinking has brought us “extremists dressed in Spartan helmets or tattooed with Roman slogans [who] appeal to the intrinsic value of a white, Western, and European heritage, under threat of a Great Replacement from without,” Quinn warns in her recent book, How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History.

How Great-Power Rivalry Hurts Ordinary Americans

Van Jackson and Michael Brenes

What does economic inequality have to do with great-power competition? Much more than you might think. Congress and the White House currently direct resources toward the national security state and away from programs and policies that support the public welfare. There is no inherent compromise between investing in defense over social welfare—but in the United States, we have a politically imposed trade-off between “guns and butter.”

Geopolitical rivalry provides legitimacy for policies that undermine economic freedoms. Many of these are justified in the name of “national security,” which too often functions as a euphemism for militarist policies that foment aggression while starving the welfare state. The consequences of militarism stretch far beyond the battlefield, worsening economic inequality and foreclosing even the prospect of economic democracy, which operates on the presumption that economic disenfranchisement breeds electoral disenfranchisement.

What Drives Elon Musk?

Cameron Abadi

The estimated net worth of Elon Musk is more than $400 billion, which makes him the richest man in the world. But Musk’s power is no longer just tied to his financial wealth or his control over businesses like Tesla, X, or SpaceX. Musk, by virtue of his close relationship with President Donald Trump, has now entered the U.S. government, where he is leading a spending-cuts effort called the Department of Government Efficiency.

How does physics inform Musk’s political worldview? How could he be personally benefiting from his work in the Trump administration? And what informs Musk’s support for far-right politics abroad?

Health Data of 1 Million Americans Stolen By Hackers

Jasmine Laws

A Connecticut-based healthcare provider has confirmed that a hacker was able to access the sensitive data of more than a million patients.

Newsweek has contacted Community Health Center (CHC) and Joseph V. DeMarco, Partner at DeMarco Law PLLC who filed the data breach notification, via email for comment.

Why It Matters

Cyberattacks on healthcare providers have increased in the U.S. in recent years. According to a report released on January 21 by Netwrix, a vendor specializing in cybersecurity solutions, 84 percent of organizations in the healthcare sector spotted a cyberattack on their infrastructure in the last 12 months.

Due to the sensitivity of health information, the hacking of healthcare provider data can cause severe concerns among the general public and various stakeholders.

What To Know

Connecticut healthcare provider CHC, which provides services to more than 145,000 Connecticut residents, confirmed in a letter to patients that on January 2 they noticed "unusual activity in our computer systems."

Trump Can’t Bully Latin America Without Consequences - Analysis

Oliver Stuenkel

U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated an apparent victory on Sunday when he coerced Colombian President Gustavo Petro to allow the resumption of U.S. deportation flights to the country. Petro had previously announced on X that he had turned away two U.S. military flights carrying deported Colombians, writing that the United States “must establish a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.”

Trump and Petro sparred on social media for hours. But the Colombian president was forced into submission after his U.S. counterpart announced retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on all Colombian goods, set to rise to 50 percent after one week, in addition to sanctions and travel bans on Colombian officials. Crude oil is Colombia’s biggest export to the United States; the South American country is the United States’ second-biggest source of coffee and top provider of cut flowers. A trade war would have been highly detrimental to the Colombian economy—especially ahead of Valentine’s Day.

Europeans Don’t Have to Be the “Losers” Trump Thinks They Are

Rym Momtaz

Surely enough, barely a week into Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President, many European officials are alighting at the Panicked and Dazed Station in Trumpland.

While it may have been somewhat understandable when Trump first burst onto the international political scene eight years ago, today, it mainly confirms what he’s always thought of them: that, to paraphrase him, at best, they are weak and meek, and at worst, are mendacious losers who don’t have any fight in them and want to placate the United States to keep free-riding on it.

Even before he was officially inaugurated, Trump’s team attempted to put Europe in a chokehold to paralyze it into submission. They rolled out a trifecta of threats to impose tariffs, pull support from NATO if European tech regulations weren’t loosened, and take over Greenland by force.

It has given Trump and the EU’s adversaries the impression that the power dynamic is lopsidedly in his favor, and that the Europeans, too helpless and dependent on the United States, have only one option: to surrender.

The Europeans’ track record so far supports this perception, but cold facts indicate the EU has powerful economic leverage. Admittedly, using it requires a DNA change. The twenty-seven member states will need to stay united, and accept that the clock has run out and they can no longer avoid negotiating new terms for the transatlantic alliance. This is bound to come at a very high short-term cost too with Trump’s aggressive measures forcing the EU to start de-risking certain aspects of its relationship with Washington. A tall order indeed, but existential crises like the one they are now confronting with the confluence of Trump, Russia and China, have a way of making the improbable possible.

Gaza checkpoint to be staffed by scores of armed American contractors

Jonathan Landay and Aram Roston

A small U.S. security firm is hiring nearly 100 U.S. special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas truce, according to a company spokesperson and a recruitment email seen by Reuters, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world's most violent conflict zones.

UG Solutions - a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina - is offering a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires, the email said.

They will staff the checkpoint at a key intersection in Gaza's interior, said the spokesperson, who confirmed the authenticity of the email.

Some people have been recruited and are already at the checkpoint, said the spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity. He did not say how many contractors were already in Gaza.

UG Solutions' role in the ceasefire deal has been reported, but the email disclosed previously unknown details including the aim of recruiting 96 veterans exclusively with U.S. special operations forces backgrounds, the pay and the types of weapons they will carry.

Ukraine Special Operations Forces and the Lessons Learned for Large-Scale Combat Operations

Doug Livermore

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has provided invaluable insights into the evolving nature of modern warfare, particularly regarding the role of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO). Ukrainian SOF units have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in countering Russian military operations through a combination of adaptability, technological integration, and unconventional warfare tactics. Examining the key lessons learned from their operations and their implications for future military doctrine provides critical insights for military planners and strategists worldwide.

Adaptability in Dynamic Battlefield Conditions

The success of Ukrainian SOF can be largely attributed to their exceptional adaptability in rapidly changing battlefield conditions. When Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian SOF quickly adjusted their traditional roles to meet the immediate challenges of high-intensity conflict. These units demonstrated remarkable flexibility in transitioning from their peacetime training and stability missions to supporting LSCO. This transition was particularly challenging given the scale and intensity of Russian operations, yet Ukrainian SOF managed to maintain operational effectiveness while adapting their tactics and procedures.

Ukraine’s Victory Will Ensure Critical Mineral Security

Margus Tsahkna

If Western support falters, Ukraine’s reserves of rare earth minerals will be left at the mercy of Russia and China.

The global economy is growing more and more dependent on critical minerals—resources vital for technological advancement, the energy transition, and even military capabilities. There are vast reserves of these minerals in Ukraine. The United States and its allies must decide whether to help Ukraine keep hold of its vast reserves of critical minerals or risk these slipping into the possession of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang.

Russia’s war on Ukraine, and by extension, the Western security architecture, is multidimensional: it extends from the military battlefield, cyberspace, information manipulation, and propaganda to the disruption of trade routes and supply chains and beyond. This includes mineral resources.

Rare earth elements and other important raw materials such as titanium, lithium, gallium, and graphite are essential for the production of high-tech electronics, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries. They are also widely used in the aerospace and defense industry.

Nearly Half The World Hates Jews – OpEd

Neville Teller

Nearly half the world hates Jews – that is the stark message that emerges from the most comprehensive survey of global public opinion on the subject ever undertaken. Published on January 14, the results revealed that 46% of all adults in the world hold entrenched antisemitic views.

The poll, known as the Global 100 Survey, was conducted between July and November 2024 by the long-established Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in conjunction with Ipsos, the multinational market research firm, and others. More than 58,000 adults from 103 countries and territories were surveyed, representing 94% of the global adult population.

Launched in 2014, the Global 100 Survey has conducted only three such polls. The latest not only revealed the startling level of antisemitism across the globe. It also showed that the proportion of adults worldwide harboring antisemitic beliefs has rocketed from 26% in 2014 to 46% by 2024.

“Antisemitism is nothing short of a global emergency,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s chief executive. “It’s clear that we need new government interventions, more education, additional safeguards on social media, and new security protocols to prevent antisemitic hate crimes…and now is the time to act.”

It’s time to catch up with cyber attackers

Guy Golan

The cyber threat landscape has reached a critical tipping point.

According to the UK government's 2024 Cyber Security Breaches Survey, a staggering 50% of businesses experienced some form of cyber breach in the last 12 months, with this figure rising dramatically to 70% for medium businesses and 74% for large businesses.

Phishing attacks dominate the threat landscape, accounting for 84% of business breaches, followed by email impersonation (35%) and malware (17%).

The statistics, while alarming, reveal only part of the challenge facing organizations today. The most pressing issue isn't just the increasing frequency of attacks, but also the growing disparity between how quickly attackers can breach systems and how long organizations take to respond.

Contemporary security technologies can detect threats within minutes, yet the average time for organizations to fully identify, contain and restore systems stretches to about 20 days – with recovery times far longer. This extended vulnerability window gives cybercriminals ample time to infiltrate networks, compromise sensitive data and even establish a backdoor for future attacks.

Is the DeepSeek Panic Overblown?

Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo

This week, leaders across Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., Wall Street, and beyond have been thrown into disarray due to the unexpected rise of the Chinese AI company DeepSeek. DeepSeek recently released AI models that rivaled OpenAI’s, seemingly for a fraction of the price, and despite American policy designed to slow China’s progress. As a result, many analysts concluded that DeepSeek’s success undermined the core beliefs driving the American AI industry—and that the companies leading this charge, like Nvidia and Microsoft, were not as valuable or technologically ahead as previously believed. Tech stocks dropped hundreds of billions of dollars in days.

But AI scientists have pushed back, arguing that many of those fears are exaggerated. They say that while DeepSeek does represent a genuine advancement in AI efficiency, it is not a massive technological breakthrough—and that the American AI industry still has key advantages over China’s.

“It’s not a leap forward on AI frontier capabilities,” says Lennart Heim, an AI researcher at RAND. “I think the market just got it wrong.”

DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot

Matt Burgess & Lily Hay Newman

Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022, hackers and security researchers have tried to find holes in large language models (LLMs) to get around their guardrails and trick them into spewing out hate speech, bomb-making instructions, propaganda, and other harmful content. In response, OpenAI and other generative AI developers have refined their system defenses to make it more difficult to carry out these attacks. But as the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek rockets to prominence with its new, cheaper R1 reasoning model, its safety protections appear to be far behind those of its established competitors.

Today, security researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania are publishing findings showing that, when tested with 50 malicious prompts designed to elicit toxic content, DeepSeek’s model did not detect or block a single one. In other words, the researchers say they were shocked to achieve a “100 percent attack success rate.”

The findings are part of a growing body of evidence that DeepSeek’s safety and security measures may not match those of other tech companies developing LLMs. DeepSeek’s censorship of subjects deemed sensitive by China’s government has also been easily bypassed.

Steel, Sweat, and Silicon: Defense Dominance in the Age of Artificial General Intelligence

Sean Lavelle

When will artificial intelligence surpass the cognitive capabilities of humans? The exact timeline for achieving this milestone—known as artificial general intelligence (AGI)—remains uncertain, yet recent advances indicate that transformative leaps may be rapidly approaching—clearly with significant defense implications. In a 2022 survey of artificial intelligence experts, 20 percent believed that human-level AI would be developed by 2032. Major leaders in the space are now talking about its creation within two or three years. One of the most evocative descriptions of what this capability could look like is “a nation of geniuses in a data center.” These geniuses would be able to do anything a human can do today with a laptop and internet connection.

If these timelines are at all reasonable, ensuring the US military is AGI ready is of paramount importance. With AGI, the tempo of military innovation could shift from decades to mere weeks, upending the established processes for fielding new capabilities. Tremendous national effort is going toward making sure America has the best AI in the world. Placing too much faith in always having the best AI carries serious risks, though, especially when computing resources and open-source breakthroughs are global and diffuse quickly. A Chinese-built model, Deepseek R1, recently drove home the point that the race for AGI can turn on a dime. Deepseek R1 uses a reasoning technique recently pioneered by OpenAI, yet comes close to matching the performance of OpenAI’s flagship model, o1. While semiconductor export controls heavily handicap the race in America’s favor, rapid algorithmic improvements could change the landscape overnight.

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