The US government has been keeping a close eye on Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek for some time, according to a former AI advisor in the Biden administration. The advisor indicated that monitoring started in late 2023.
Ben Buchanan, who served as President Joe Biden’s special advisor for AI until January 2024, spoke on “The Ezra Klein Show,” which aired recently. He stated, “We had been watching DeepSeek in the White House since November 2023 or thereabouts, when they put out their first coding system.”
Buchanan, now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, noted DeepSeek’s engineers were highly skilled. He acknowledged their “extremely talented” engineers and added that “they got better and better at their systems throughout 2024.” He served in the Biden administration from June 2021, holding positions in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Security Council before his role as special advisor.
Despite acknowledging DeepSeek’s achievements, Buchanan said the “media hype around it was not warranted.” He explained that DeepSeek’s advancements, which triggered a sell-off in AI-related stocks in January due to the startup’s high-performing and cost-effective models, didn’t represent a fundamental shift. He believes DeepSeek is “doing exactly the same kind of algorithmic efficiency work” as Open AI and Anthropic, adding that they are “still constrained by computing power.”
Elaborating on US policy, Buchanan says, “We should tighten the screws and continue to constrain them…And this should be a reminder that chip controls are important, China is a worthy competitor here, and we shouldn’t take anything for granted.” However, he cautioned against alarmism, noting, “But I don’t think this is the time to say the sky is falling or the fundamental scaling laws have broken.” Buchanan added that the concerns raised about DeepSeek highlight the importance of maintaining competitive and secure access to advanced technologies.
In contrast, former President Donald Trump expressed a different view regarding DeepSeek’s advancements. During a GOP policy retreat in January, Trump said he saw their cheaper models as “a positive, as an asset.” He emphasized that “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.”
Representatives from DeepSeek and the White House did not offer any comments regarding these statements.
