Predation Disguised as Progress: Why the Chinese Communist Party’s AI Strategy Demands a Firm U.S. Response
The DeepSeek episode is not evidence of superior Chinese innovation—it is a case study in predatory state behavior. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically exploited Western openness by harvesting open-source frameworks, distilling U.S.-trained models, embedding researchers in American institutions, and leveraging cloud compute and supply chains that were never intended for adversarial use. This is not free-market competition or parallel development; it is an extractive strategy designed to avoid the costs, risks, and time associated with genuine innovation. By repackaging U.S. breakthroughs as domestic achievements, the CCP accelerates its capabilities while weakening the very ecosystem that produced them. What makes this behavior especially dangerous is that it is paired with economic and informational warfare. The CCP does not merely seek technical parity—it seeks to undermine confidence in U.S. technology leadership, destabilize markets, and discourage long-term American investment in high-cost AI infrastructure. The DeepSeek narrative, amplified through financial and media channels, contributed to massive market losses not because it represented a true breakthrough, but because it was framed to suggest that U.S. efforts were inefficient or obsolete. This mirrors historical CCP doctrine: weaken the adversary psychologically and economically while avoiding direct confrontation. Left unchecked, this strategy rewards predation and penalizes innovation. Countering these practices is therefore a national security necessity, not a protectionist impulse. The United States must recognize that unrestricted access to frontier AI research, compute, and academic ecosystems is being weaponized against it. Effective countermeasures include tightening export controls on advanced compute, restricting adversarial access to high-risk AI models, hardening research institutions against infiltration, and establishing secure, AI-optimized research hubs that cannot be externally exploited. This is not about retreating from openness—it is about enforcing reciprocity and defending the conditions that make real innovation possible. History shows that adversaries who rely on extraction rather than creation ultimately falter—but only if the innovators protect their advantage. The time to do so is now.