OpenAI Wants to Ban DeepSeek

An Op-Ed: Sam Altman doesn't think competition is a good idea. Peter Thiel told him that winners escape competition.

US President Trump gestures as CEO of Open AI Sam Altman speaks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on January 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. - Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images

Audio Version 🎧 15:11

Good Morning,

I was alarmed to read that OpenAI, the closed-source AI monopoly who rose to fame with ChatGPT wants to ban DeepSeek, the open-source model maker that is being adopted at record pace. Incumbents should never have the means to stifle younger and more able competitors. This is against everything meritocracy and free competition stands for, supposedly values America once prided itself upon.

Open-source models are the biggest threat to OpenAI and Anthropic, which are funded by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

These two AI startups are the Generative AI Duopoly of the current era. They are also embedded into the NSA, Department of Defense and the Pentagon, on National security grounds. Something they once pledged, not to do.

Instead of competing on a level playing field, BigTech wants to use U.S. anti-China rhetoric and U.S’s push for AI Supremacy to veto Open-source models that might threaten its own global dominance and cash-cows.

In a new policy proposal, OpenAI describes Chinese AI lab DeepSeek as “state-subsidized” and “state-controlled,” and recommends that the U.S. government consider banning models from the outfit and similar People’s Republic of China (PRC)-supported operations.

If the only reason you exist is by funding from Microsoft, you didn’t emerge through a meritocracy or by your own merit or talent and since DeepSeek-R1 was announced in late January, 2025, you can tell OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI have been slower to iterate on their models and innovations than the likes of Alibaba Qwen, ByteDance, Tencent and of course DeepSeek.

OpenAI instead of competing, is playing to the Trump Administration’s anti-China (supposedly China hawkish stance) sentiment and MAGA impulses to try to remove a competitor, by force or foul means if necessary. OpenAI that company where most of its leaders have left where there exists an army of lawyers, PR folk and lobbyists: