Trump: The rise of DeepSeek should sound the alarm for American companies

Author: Wu Yu, Jinshi Data

President Trump said on Monday that the sudden rise of Chinese artificial intelligence application DeepSeek “should sound the alarm for American technology companies,” and that it is a good thing for Chinese companies to develop cheaper and more efficient AI models.

Trump said he still expects US tech companies to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, but he acknowledges the challenges brought by the low-cost AI assistant DeepSeek. DeepSeek soared to the top spot in the Apple App Store over the weekend.

“A Chinese company’s release of DeepSeek AI should sound the alarm for our industry, and we need to focus on competition,” he said while traveling in Florida.

DeepSeek has caused panic in the US tech industry and stock market. According to the little-known Chinese startup behind DeepSeek, compared to the competition models of Meta and OpenAI, DeepSeek performed well in testing, and its development cost is much lower.

Trump said he believes that a low-cost model is a “very positive development” for the overall AI industry, because “it is better to spend less resources, rather than investing billions of dollars, hoping to achieve the same solution.”

DeepSeek is the latest in a series of Chinese applications that have recently surged in popularity in the United States. Previously, with TikTok on the brink of being banned, Americans turned to Chinese applications Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 as alternatives to TikTok. After TikTok was ultimately shut down in the United States for less than a day and then relaunched for existing users, it still cannot be downloaded from the Apple and Google app stores.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order canceling some of the Biden administration’s regulations on artificial intelligence development, claiming that these regulations hindered the industry’s growth.

However, it is currently unclear what new artificial intelligence policies (if any) the Trump administration or Congress may adopt to address the rise of DeepSeek.

John Moolenaar, chairman of the House China Task Force and Republican representative from Michigan, said on Monday that he hopes to see the United States take action to curb the development of DeepSeek.

Developers at DeepSeek said that despite current US controls on the export of high-performance semiconductors, they have still developed this application. This triggered a heated online debate on Monday, including the effects of hardware limitations and their future.

Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner defended existing export controls related to advanced chip technology and suggested that more regulation may be needed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson called DeepSeek “a serious threat”.

David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto Czar, said in an article on X that the success of DeepSeek “indicates that the AI competition will be very fierce.” He also said that the executive order issued by former President Biden on this issue “hindered” American AI companies.

“I have confidence in the United States, but we cannot be complacent,” he wrote.