This week the U.S. tech sector was routed by the Chinese launch of DeepSeek, and Sen. Josh Hawley is putting forth legislation to prevent that from happening again.
Hawley’s bill, the Decoupling America’s Artifical Intelligence Capabilities from China Act, would cut off U.S.-China cooperation on AI. It would ban exports or imports of AI technology from China, ban American companies from conducting research there, and prohibit any U.S. investment in AI tech companies in China.
‘Every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States,’ said Hawley, R-Mo., in a statement. ‘America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary.’
His is one of the first bills introduced directly in response to the DeepSeek market shakeup of the past few days.
DeepSeek’s release of a new high-profile AI model that costs less to run than existing models like those of Meta and OpenAI sent a chill through U.S. markets, with chipmaker Nvidia stocks tanking on Monday before slowly gaining ground again on Tuesday.
The surprise release displayed how China’s economic competitiveness has far outpaced the ability of U.S. business leaders and lawmakers to agree on what to do about it.
Unlike other legislation to thwart China’s profiting off U.S. innovation, Hawley’s bill would cover any AI-related technology instead of specific entities, which has prompted the Chinese to seek out loopholes through other companies.
Microsoft and OpenAI are now reportedly investigating whether DeepSeek could have accessed and used their data to train its own Chinese model, Bloomberg News reported.
White House artificial intelligence czar David Sacks told Fox News there is ‘substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s models.’
President Donald Trump on Monday said DeepSeek’s arrival on the scene ‘should be a wakeup call’ for America’s tech companies after the new low-cost AI assistant soared to number one on the Apple app store over the weekend.
‘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,’ Trump said.
But the president said it was ultimately a good thing if the world had access to cheaper, faster AI models. ‘Instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution,’ Trump said.
In his final week in office, President Joe Biden issued a rule slapping export controls on AI chips, with his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, arguing that the U.S. was only six to 18 months ahead of China in the AI sector.
U.S. officials are now looking at the national security implications of DeepSeek, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who added that the Trump administration was working to ‘ensure American AI dominance.’
