Battle for AI supremacy is not just about who builds the best models, but who controls the narratives these models generate.
Rahul Pawa
The rise of DeepSeek AI has sent tremors through the global technology landscape. A Chinese AI startup, born from the mind of a hedge fund magnate, has not only introduced an artificial intelligence model that rivals Silicon Valley’s best but also inadvertently exposed the geopolitical and ideological rifts within the AI industry. While DeepSeek’s technological advancements have been lauded for efficiency and cost-effectiveness, its apparent ideological leanings toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have ignited a deeper conversation about bias, control, and the shifting balance of power in AI development.
The global financial markets were caught off guard when DeepSeek unveiled its latest AI model, R1. Developed with a fraction of the resources used by US tech giants, R1 proved that Chinese firms could innovate despite severe restrictions on access to high-end hardware. Wall Street responded violently—Nvidia, Alphabet, and Microsoft collectively lost over $1 trillion in market value in a single day. This moment has been described as a new ‘Sputnik moment,’ signalling China’s growing self-reliance in AI research and its ability to leapfrog Western competitors through ingenuity rather than brute computational force.
DeepSeek’s rise was achieved not through endless scaling of large language models, as pursued by OpenAI and Google, but through optimising AI architecture with limited resources. This feat highlights the possibility that Western AI development has grown inefficient, reliant on excessive funding and compute power rather than fundamental innovation. However, this technological marvel comes with a less celebrated feature—ideological constraints embedded within its responses.
Investigations into DeepSeek’s chatbot functionality revealed a concerning trend: its responses consistently aligned with the official narratives of the CCP. Unlike ChatGPT, which provides balanced perspectives, DeepSeek outright refuses to answer politically sensitive questions, including those about the Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong, and human rights violations in Xinjiang. In some cases, it actively defends CPC’s position, asserting that allegations of intellectual property theft and repression are unfounded.
This raises critical ethical and legal questions about AI governance. If an AI system is designed to omit or distort information to align with a state’s interests, can it still be considered a neutral technology? More importantly, how should democratic societies respond when AI models are weaponised for ideological influence? DeepSeek’s success forces us to reconsider the very nature of AI development. Historically, the West has popularised AI as an apolitical, objective tool—an assumption now challenged by China’s entry into the field with explicitly communist undertones. The strategic implications are profound: AI is no longer just a competition of technological prowess but a contest over narrative control. The fact that DeepSeek has quickly become one of the most downloaded AI applications in the United States further complicates matters. With AI-powered chatbots increasingly serving as sources of information, what happens when the most sophisticated tools are programmed with government-approved biases? The digital information ecosystem, already fragile due to misinformation and deepfake technology, could face an unprecedented crisis where AI itself becomes a propagandist.
Western nations have been slow to recognise the extent of AI’s role in shaping global ideological conflicts. While concerns over AI ethics have largely centred on bias within Western frameworks—such as racial or gender discrimination—DeepSeek highlights a different challenge: the embedding of nationalistic narratives into AI. This raises a crucial regulatory question: should democratic governments intervene when foreign AI models propagate state-driven narratives? If so, how can they do so without infringing on free speech or overstepping into technological protectionism? The European Union’s AI Act and the US government’s AI Executive Order have addressed transparency and accountability in AI but are ill-equipped to counter foreign influence through AI-driven information control.
As DeepSeek’s influence grows, it is clear that AI is no longer just a technological arms race but a front in the broader geopolitical struggle between open and authoritarian systems. If AI models like DeepSeek can be moulded to serve CCP interests, the world must prepare for a future where AI-driven narratives shape global public opinion in unseen and insidious ways. DeepSeek may have begun as an experiment in maximising AI efficiency, but its real impact lies in its demonstration of AI’s potential as a ideological tool. The battle for AI supremacy is not just about who builds the best models, but who controls the narratives these models generate. In this light, DeepSeek’s emergence is not merely an economic disruption—it is an ideological challenge to the very foundations of the global AI industry.
(Author is Research Director at Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies, New Delhi based non-partisan think-tank)
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