China’s tech startup DeepSeek charged onto the scene earlier this year, roiling markets and becoming a household name practically overnight. The performance and design efficiency of the company’s open-source artificial intelligence chatbot took many investors, security analysts, and Western policymakers by surprise. Indeed, it left many scratching their heads and wondering: Do we need to rethink our approach to beating China in the AI race?
It’s a fair question.
Before throwing out our playbook, however, it is important to assess what DeepSeek’s recent success is and what it is not. Some reporters and essayists have posited that the company’s rise signals the downfall of American tech might and a shift away from the innovation power structure our nation has been cultivating for decades. These fears are overblown. Reports are already surfacing that DeepSeek’s R1 model may have distilled outputs from advanced AI models to train its program. It also remains true that large U.S. models are still the envy of the world. That said, the acceleration of China’s technological capabilities should force policymakers to rely less on faulty export controls and instead redirect their focus on strengthening America’s tech dominance.
The centerpiece of any strategy to extend our lead over China, which U.S. officials currently estimate at three to six months, should center on energy infrastructure development. The United States needs more production, transportation, electricity generation, and grid capacity to support the data centers that are powering homegrown AI technology.
President Donald Trump and his team have correctly identified energy constraints as a top impediment for sustained AI growth in the U.S., and they have often framed the issue through the lens of a digital tech arms race with China. It is no coincidence that the president underscored the need to power America’s global AI leadership in the policy preamble of his recent executive order establishing the National Energy Dominance Council.
China doesn’t have to worry about energy projects being tied up in years of permitting headaches and regulatory purgatory. The country moved forward with more than 94 gigawatts of new coal capacity last year, the most in 10 years. To put that in perspective, the U.S. was on pace to add approximately 62 gigawatts of total generating capacity in 2024. Chinese nuclear development is also growing at a rapid clip with 23 reactors currently under construction. The Energy Information Administration notes that while the U.S. still maintains the largest nuclear fleet in the world, it took our country four decades to build the capacity that China has secured in the last 10 years.
While China’s command and control economy is certainly not worth emulating, we should be taking commonsense steps to reform our Byzantine permitting processes and reduce regulatory burdens so that our market-based system can address supply imbalances. The U.S. should also make strategic investments in our nuclear power sector and pursue creative partnerships to foster innovative nuclear designs and processes like fusion. Leaders should look to the recent announcement from Texas A&M University, which is partnering with four nuclear reactor companies on small modular reactor development, as an example for public-private collaboration.
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This private sector innovation paired with a welcoming business climate is the special sauce that can ensure America maintains and grows its global AI leadership. The central planning that allows China to rapidly build energy capacity undeterred by environmental degradation is the same moral and policy failure that enables the Chinese Communist Party to scale its technological advancements at the expense of its citizens’ free expression and privacy. DeepSeek’s new chatbot has already been found to avoid politically sensitive topics, such as the 1989 killing of unarmed civilians in Tiananmen Square, and provide answers that pull language from Chinese state media and other propaganda.
As long as China engages in such behavior and thumbs its nose at the rules-based order, there will always be a fundamental need for U.S. technological leadership. We cannot afford to forfeit our advantage by starving our most innovative companies of the energy infrastructure they need to thrive.
George P. Bush served as the Texas land commissioner from 2015 to 2023.