Steer Clear of DeepSeek
#HAPPENINGNOW | Many were introduced to DeepSeek on Monday when tech stocks took a hit, it reached #1 in the app store, & news broke. But, to be clear, DeepSeek is a privacy nightmare to be avoided…
DeepSeek, China's answer to ChatGPT, has sent shockwaves through Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC this week — each for different reasons.
For the tech industry, DeepSeek's model is technically impressive, cost-efficient to develop, and available as “open source” code for developers to build upon. This competitive threat, combined with a tiny price tag, has rattled the stock market.
But there's a far more alarming aspect that demands our attention:
The DeepSeek app, which shot to #1 in Apple's app store this week, is sending Americans' data directly to China.
“To be clear, DeepSeek is sending your data to China. The English-language DeepSeek privacy policy, which lays out how the company handles user data, is unequivocal: “We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China.” —DeepSeek’s Popular AI App Is Explicitly Sending US Data to China, Wired, January 27, 2025
Dangers of Our Data in Beijing
The Chinese government's disregard for privacy rights (both foreign and domestic), combined with their history of weaponizing data against Western interests, poses a significant threat. Data collection and exploitation remain central to their strategy for global dominance, and our government has been telling us for some time.
From a declassified government report:
The globalization of China’s surveillance and coercion capabilities through Identity Exploitationand Control (IEC) to target individuals: “The ability to collect, process, and exploit comprehensive data on individuals and groups has accelerated in recent years at unprecedented levels of speed, scale, and precision. Thus, these age old techniques have transformed into a major strategic tool for gaining advantage across all phases of competition and conflict. Medical, health, financial, behaviors, affiliations, genetic profiles, social interactions, location history are some of the data available. Strategically important individuals and groups across the globe—in government, military, industry, and media—can be targeted. Identity exposes vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit to damage U.S. interests by coercing, bribing, threatening, distracting or tricking them, stealing their authority or faking their apparent actions to destroy reputations.” - New Dimensions of Conflict, April 2023, Department of Defense, Defense Science Board
The TikTok Connection
The issues with ByteDance provide a case study in the problem. Despite widespread recognition of TikTok's data privacy risks and a bipartisan push for regulation, our government's mixed messages (i.e., leveraging the platform while warning of its dangers) have left Americans confused about the true stakes.
Past coverage worth checkout again:
https://www.aiforfamilies.com/p/what-tiktok-did-next-and-why-it-matters
https://www.aiforfamilies.com/p/what-is-going-on-with-tiktok
Why the Wall Street Dip
While US companies using DeepSeek's open-source model could provide some data protection as intermediaries, this prospect has spooked investors by introducing a cheaper alternative to existing AI solutions.
DeepSeek's emergence was inevitable, as was the exposure of Silicon Valley's vulnerabilities. Having gone through the same cycle many times over the years (and decades) it’s painful to see Silicon Valley repeating the same pattern.
It looks something like this…
Initial euphoria… (“it will change the world”)
“Master-of-the-universe” hubris of founders (the case of Scarlett Johansson’s voice)
Skipping the benefits and going right to doomsday scenarios
Astronomical salaries for work with little commercial return
Marginalization of cautionary voices (ChatGPT founders leave)
And, like the dotcom era: massive investment in tools with uncertain global competition (and even distaste for what’s being created)
The New Cold War
On the geopolitical front, China's success here reveals both their strategic focus and our deeply distressing susceptibility. Despite bipartisan agreement on TikTok's threats, DeepSeek's rapid rise to the top of app downloads demonstrates our collective failure to take data privacy seriously.
And the stakes couldn't be higher: AI systems depend on vast, diverse datasets for development, and the implications and repercussions on our children’s futures are still unknown.
But by readily surrendering our data, we're handing China a crucial advantage in the AI race — and they barely had to try.