U.S. officials are assessing the national security risks of China’s DeepSeek AI, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, as concerns grow over its impact on American artificial intelligence dominance.
The National Security Council is reviewing the app, and President Donald Trump has called it a “wake-up call” for the U.S. AI industry.
The emergence of DeepSeek AI triggered a global selloff in technology stocks, as investors worried about competition for U.S. firms such as OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google. White House AI and crypto adviser David Sacks said intellectual property theft could be a factor in DeepSeek’s rise, citing a technique called distillation, where AI models learn from existing systems.
Sacks said U.S. AI firms may take steps to prevent distillation to slow down competing models. During his administration, former President Joe Biden imposed export restrictions on AI chips and manufacturing equipment to limit China’s AI progress.
Trump said DeepSeek AI highlights the need for U.S. companies to remain competitive and suggested that China’s advancements in AI should push American firms to innovate further. “The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Trump said.
Sacks added that U.S. AI companies had become “a little distracted” and must refocus on maintaining leadership in the sector.
