DeepSeek's compute complaints cut against Beijing's message

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:56:40

   One actually kind of, like, funny one is around DeepSeek. So, you know DeepSeek, right? They made this, like, open source model that, like, everyone, like, lost their minds about back in January. R1, yeah. Yeah, R1. And they're legitimately a really, really good team. But it's fairly clear that even as of like end of last year and certainly in the summer of last year, like they were not dialed in to the CCP mothership and they were doing stuff that was like actually kind of hilariously messing up the propaganda efforts of of the CCP without realizing it.

2. 1:57:16

   So to give you, like, some context on this, one of the CCP's, like, large kind of propaganda goals in the last four years has been framing, creating this narrative that, like, the export controls we have around AI and, like, all this gear and stuff that we were talking about, look, man, those don't even work. So you might as well just, like, give up. Why don't you just give up on the export controls?

3. 1:57:42

   It's pointless. Why don't you just give up? We don't even care. We don't care. So that trying to frame that narrative and they went to like gigantic efforts to do this. So I don't know if there's this like kind of crazy thing where the secretary of commerce under Biden, Gina Raimondo, visited China in, I think, August 2023. And the Chinese basically like timed the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 phone that had this these chips that were supposed to be made by like export controlled shit for right for her visit.

4. 1:58:14

   So it was basically just like a big like, fuck you, we don't even give a shit about your export controls, like basically trying a morale hit or whatever. And you think about that, right? That's an incredibly expensive set piece. That's like you got to coordinate with Huawei. You got to like get the TikTok memes and shit like going in the right direction. All that stuff and all the stuff they've been putting out is around this narrative.

5. 1:58:38

   Now, fast forward to mid last year, the CEO of DeepSeek, the company, back then it was totally obscure. Like nobody was tracking who they were. They were working in total obscurity. He goes on this, he does this random interview on Substack. And what he says is he's like, yeah, so honestly, like we're really excited and doing this AGI push or whatever. And like, honestly, like money's not the problem for us.

6. 1:59:07

   Talent's not the problem for us. But, like, access to compute, like, these export controls, man, do they ever work? That's a real problem for us. Oh, boy. And, like, nobody noticed at the time. But then the whole DeepSeek R1 thing blew up in December. And now you imagine, like, you're the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Like, you've been, like, you've been putting this narrative together for, like, four years.

7. 1:59:33

   and this jackass that nobody heard about five minutes ago basically just like shits all over and like you're not hearing that line from many more no no no no they've locked that shit down oh and actually the funny the funniest part of this they're in right when r1 launched there's a random deep seek employee i think his name is like dia guo or something like that he tweets out he's like so this is like our most exciting launch of the year nothing can stop us on the path to agi accept access to compute and then literally the dude in washington dc who works at the think tank on export controls against china reposts that on x and goes basically like uh cool good message received and so like hilarious for us but also like you know that on the backside somebody got screamed at for that shit somebody got magic bust somebody got yeah somebody

8. 2:00:30

   got taken away or whatever. Because it just undermined their entire four-year narrative