This is no time for complacency. Communist China's DeepSeek, a breakthrough in inexpensive AI computing that rocked US tech markets this week (tech investor Marc Andreesen called it a "Sputnik moment") is really a wake-up to the Trump administration. Call to form a Manhattan Project as soon as possible – this week! – to ensure that America stays competitive in what is sure to be the next breakthrough – which China is already developing: unlimited amounts of totally clean energy produced by nuclear fusion in donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks.
US tech markets suffered a severe shock this week, when Communist China unveiled DeepSeek, an AI program founded in 2023 by Chinese hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng that can sort through masses of some material effectively as well as comparable US programs, but for less money and with less-sophisticated computer chips. DeepSeek professes ignorance about Tiananmen Square -- "Let's talk about something else," it emits --but is skilled at extrapolating whatever it has been fed. Financial analyst Matt Levine notes:
"[T]here is a sort of general skill like 'program a computer to take a huge pile of analogous data and predict the most likely next _______,' where the blank can be filled in with 'word in the sentence' or 'stock that will go up....' now everyone has a computer that can pick stocks, while there is infinity money in building a computer that can talk. So now the people who got good at building computers that can pick stocks are pivoting to processing natural language."
The newest frontier appears to be a country's ability -- through government or through government-private partnerships -- to produce unlimited amounts of totally clean energy by nuclear fusion in donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks. China's "artificial sun" is already well on its way to developing unimaginable amounts of nuclear fusion energy that is clean, cheap and endless:
"China's EAST reactor set a new record by sustaining a plasma loop for 1,066 seconds at temperatures over 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, marking a significant advancement in nuclear fusion research and potential energy production."
The Trump administration must immediately establish a "Manhattan Project" to meet this new technological revolution in nuclear fusion energy by developing tokamaks superior to China's.
It is most urgent not to let China, after decades of stealing horrendous amounts of priceless US technology, dominate 21st century technology at the expense of the US.
Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
