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Earlier this week, almost overnight, the American tech industry entered a full-on panic. The latest version of DeepSeek, an AI model from a Chinese start-up of the same name, appeared to equal OpenAI’s most advanced program, o1. On Monday, DeepSeek overtook ChatGPT as the No. 1 free app on Apple’s mobile-app store in the United States.

So far, China has lagged the U.S. in the AI race. DeepSeek suggests that the country has gained significant ground: The chatbot was built more quickly and with less money than analogous models in the U.S., and also appears to use less computing power. Software developers using DeepSeek pay roughly 95 percent less per word than they do with OpenAI’s top model. One prominent AI executive wrote that DeepSeek was a “wake up call for America.” Because DeepSeek appears to be cheaper and more efficient than similarly capable American AI models, the tech industry’s enormous investments in computer chips and data centers have been thrown into doubt—so much that the top AI chipmaker, Nvidia, lost $600 billion in market value on Monday, the largest single-day drop in U.S. history. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said that it was “invigorating to have a new competitor” and that, in response, the company would move up some new software announcements. (Yesterday morning, OpenAI said that it is investigating whether DeepSeek used ChatGPT outputs to train its own model.)

But many prominent American researchers and tech executives celebrated DeepSeek, as well. That’s because “the most notable feature of DeepSeek may be not that it is Chinese, but that it is relatively open,” I wrote on Monday. Whereas the top American AI labs at OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have kept their technology top-secret, DeepSeek published an in-depth technical report and is allowing anybody to download and modify the program’s code. “Being democratic—in the sense of vesting power in software developers and users—is precisely what has made DeepSeek a success,” I wrote. Start-ups and researchers love this relative transparency. In theory, competitors can use DeepSeek’s code and research to rapidly catch up to OpenAI with far fewer resources—you might not need colossal data centers to get to the front of the AI race. (The Atlantic recently entered into a corporate partnership with OpenAI.) However, there’s substantial uncertainty about just how much cheaper DeepSeek was to build, based on reports about the start-up’s hardware acquisitions and uncertainty about how the model was trained.

Meanwhile, for national-security hawks, the fear is that an open-source program that won’t answer questions about the Tiananmen Square protests could become a global technological touchpoint. DeepSeek could face similar privacy concerns as TikTok: Already, the U.S. Navy has banned its use, citing security concerns.

Any predictions, for now, are highly speculative. The global AI race is far from over, and forthcoming products from Silicon Valley could leap ahead once again. At the very least, U.S. tech companies may have to reconsider whether the best way to build AI is by keeping their models a secret.

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

China’s DeepSeek Surprise

By Matteo Wong

One week ago, a new and formidable challenger for OpenAI’s throne emerged. A Chinese AI start-up, DeepSeek, launched a model that appeared to match the most powerful version of ChatGPT but, at least according to its creator, was a fraction of the cost to build. The program, called DeepSeek-R1, has incited plenty of concern: Ultrapowerful Chinese AI models are exactly what many leaders of American AI companies feared when they, and more recently President Donald Trump, have sounded alarms about a technological race between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. This is a “wake up call for America,” Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, commented on social media.

But at the same time, many Americans—including much of the tech industry—appear to be lauding this Chinese AI. As of this morning, DeepSeek had overtaken ChatGPT as the top free application on Apple’s mobile-app store in the United States. Researchers, executives, and investors have been heaping on praise. The new DeepSeek model “is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, an outspoken supporter of Trump, wrote on X. The program shows “the power of open research,” Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, wrote online.

Read the full article.

What to Read Next

The GPT era is already ending: “The release of o1, in particular, has provided the clearest glimpse yet at what sort of synthetic ‘intelligence’ the start-up and companies following its lead believe they are building,” I wrote in December. The new AI panic: “The obsession with frontier models has now collided with mounting panic about China, fully intertwining ideas for the models’ regulation with national-security concerns,” Karen Hao wrote in 2023.

P.S.

After several major tech executives announced their support for Donald Trump, many liberal internet users are now alleging that they are being censored on certain social-media platforms. “To some, this pattern was as unmistakable as it was malicious,” my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany writes. “Social media was turning against Democrats.” And they are panicking.

— Matteo

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For a few years in the 2010s, America seemed to be falling out of love with soda. But some blend of price-conscious shopping, kooky social-media trends (milk and coke, anyone?), and perhaps a streak of fatalistic behavior on the part of Americans has made the beverage newly relevant.

Soda consumption declined consistently over the decade leading up to 2015, in part because of backlash from a health-conscious public and a series of soda-tax battles; some soda drinking was also displaced by the likes of energy drinks, coffee, and bottled water. However, in 2017, the CDC announced that rates of sugary-beverage consumption had plateaued—at a rate far above the government-recommended limit. Now soda sales are ticking back up modestly: Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper both saw soda-case sales rise in the past year, and total sales volumes for soft drinks have risen, according to the investment-bank advisory firm Evercore ISI; last year, Coca-Cola was among the fastest-growing brands for women, Morning Consult found. Soda is having a cultural moment too: Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi” was a, if not the, song of the summer. And the U.S. president-elect is famously a fan of Diet Coke, reportedly drinking a dozen a day during his first term.

Compared with 20 years ago, Americans are drinking far fewer sugar-sweetened beverages, particularly soda—but compared with a decade ago, they are drinking almost as much, Dariush Mozaffarian, a physician and a nutrition expert at Tufts, told me. Researchers have suggested that there are links between drinking large amounts of sugary drinks and a range of negative health outcomes, but the people most open to changing their soda habits may have already changed them, Mozaffarian noted. In order for cultural norms around soda to shift, drinking it needs to become uncool, he argued. That’s not an impossible goal, but it can be achieved only through a combination of sustained policy efforts, strong messaging from public-health officials, and perhaps even a bit of help from celebrities.

Public-health messaging alone can’t get people to change their behavior. Soda brands have been “a part of our cultural life for decades,” my colleague Nicholas Florko, who covers health policy, told me. “And so there is going to be some reluctance if you tell people” to ease up on “this thing that your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, have been drinking forever.” Part of the draw of soda is that it’s generally quite cheap. To undercut that appeal, activists and politicians have pushed to implement taxes on sugary drinks; in many cases, they have received major pushback from industry and business groups. Researchers have found that, in places where sugary-drink taxes managed to pass, they do help: One study last year found that sales of sugary drinks went down by a third in American cities with soda taxes, and there’s no evidence that people traveled beyond the area looking for cheaper drinks. But these taxes require political will—and pushing for people’s groceries to cost more is not always an appealing prospect for politicians, Nicholas pointed out, especially in our current moment, when Americans are still recovering from the effects of high inflation.

Soda taxes are controversial, but a soda tax isn’t just about cost: Part of the reason such policies work, says Justin White, a health-policy expert at Boston University, is that they can make sugary drinks seem less socially acceptable. “Policies affect the norms, and norms feed back into people’s choices,” he told me. Now new soda norms are emerging, including a crop of sodas that claim to be gut-healthy (although, Mozaffarian said, more research needs to be done to confirm such claims).

Soda feels like an intrinsic part of American life. But generations of canny advertising and celebrity endorsements, Mozaffarian noted, are responsible for embedding soda in so many parts of America—think of its placement in ballparks and other social spaces—and in the day-to-day rhythms of offices and schools. Curbing soda consumption would require a similarly intentional shift.

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Today’s News

The Supreme Court upheld a law that will effectively ban TikTok in the United States if the social-media platform’s Chinese parent company does not sell it by Sunday. The Israeli cabinet voted to approve a cease-fire deal with Hamas, which is expected to take effect Sunday. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem testified in her Senate confirmation hearing for the role of secretary of Homeland Security.

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The Books Briefing: Two novels take different approaches to resurrecting the dead, Maya Chung writes. Atlantic Intelligence: TikTok is set to be banned in the U.S., following a decision by the Supreme Court. But the legacy of its algorithm will live on, Damon Beres writes.

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Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

‘I Won’t Touch Instagram’

By Kaitlyn Tiffany

If TikTok does indeed get banned or directly shut off by its parent company, it would be a seismic event in internet history. At least a third of American adults use the app, as do a majority of American teens, according to Pew Research Center data. These users have spent the past few days coming to terms with the app’s possible demise—and lashing out however they could think to.

Read the full article.

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Watch. The first season of Severance was a chilly riot, too cool to offer viewers catharsis. The second season (streaming on Apple TV+) digs into more human questions, Sophie Gilbert writes.

Commemorate. The death of David Lynch, America’s cinematic poet, is shocking only because it seemed he’d be with us forever, David Sims writes.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Over the next several days, many of Donald Trump’s Cabinet selections will appear before the Senate for confirmation hearings. By putting forth a series of unqualified candidates who, in other political moments, would likely not have made it this far, Trump has muddled the process before the hearings have even begun: As my colleague David Graham put it in November, “the sheer quantity of individually troubling nominees might actually make it harder for the Senate to block any of them.”

But the outcome of the Senate confirmation hearings is not a foregone conclusion. Yes, Senate Republicans have shown that they are reliably deferential toward Trump (though some drew a line at his selection of Matt Gaetz for attorney general). Many of his picks will be easily confirmed, my colleague Russell Berman, who covers politics, predicted, given the Republicans’ 53–47 majority in the Senate. But with the current makeup of the Senate, each pick can afford to lose only three GOP votes (assuming that every Democrat opposes the nomination), so for the ones who have yet to lock in support from every single Republican, the hearings could make the difference. Democrats, Russell explained to me, will attempt to use the hearings to build a case for the public that some of Trump’s nominees “are either unqualified or don’t reflect the views and values of most Americans.”

Among the first hearings is one that will reveal whether even a few Republicans are willing to defy the president-elect. Tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. EST, Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, is scheduled to appear before senators. They will have much to ask him about, including Hegseth’s confirmation that he reached a financial settlement with a woman who accused him of sexual assault (though he has denied the assault allegation), accusations that he is prone to excessive drinking (he has denied having a drinking problem, and one Republican senator has claimed that Hegseth told senators that he has stopped drinking and won’t drink if confirmed), reports of his failures in leading veterans’ organizations and forced departures from those roles (which Hegseth’s camp called “outlandish claims”), and his suggestion that women shouldn’t serve in military-combat positions.

Democrats have already hammered him on these issues: Senator Elizabeth Warren released a scalding 33-page letter last week outlining questions about his fitness to serve. Republicans have also scrutinized Hegseth and other nominees, although none has yet said publicly that they would vote against any of Trump’s picks. Russell advised that in addition to the Republican moderates Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, GOP senators to keep a close eye on throughout the hearings include Senator Mitch McConnell, who is somewhat liberated from total deference to Trump because he’s no longer leader of the party, and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to impeach Trump after January 6.

Not every pick has a hearing scheduled yet—RFK Jr., Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and others are not yet on the calendar. In recent decades, just one Cabinet nomination (John Tower, George H. W. Bush’s pick for secretary of defense) has been voted down; others who faced tough odds have withdrawn—a path Hegseth or other nominees may follow if it seems likely they won’t win enough support. Gaetz, Trump’s initial pick to lead the Justice Department, bowed out shortly after being tapped, following an ethics-committee inquiry into allegations that included sexual misconduct and illicit drug use (Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing).

Senators from both parties have pushed to see FBI background checks that, although not legally required, have been customary for a president to mandate (the agreement that Trump’s transition team signed with the DOJ did not specify whether he will require FBI involvement for his picks). Trump and his supporters have for years been attempting to damage the reputation of the FBI, and now some, including Elon Musk, are suggesting that anything the agency digs up won’t be credible. That posture, Russell explained, is another tactic to “speed up the confirmation of nominees whom the Senate might have rejected in an earlier political era.” In an effort to get their way, Trump’s allies seem poised to cast doubt on the whole process, encouraging Americans to mistrust another long-standing government norm. That legacy could last longer than Trump’s second term.

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Winds are expected to pick up across parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, according to the National Weather Service. The wildfires in Southern California have killed at least 25 people, according to the Los Angeles Times. Federal Judge Aileen Cannon allowed the release of a portion of a report written by former Special Counsel Jack Smith about the 2020 election-interference case against Trump. President Joe Biden announced that student loans will be forgiven for more than 150,000 borrowers.

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The Wonder Reader: Everyday decisions can accumulate into a life of isolation, Isabel Fattal writes.

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Evening Read

Illustration by Leon Edler

The Easiest Way to Keep Your Friends

By Serena Dai

The hardest part about adult friendship is, by far, scheduling time to see one another, especially when trying to plan for a group. Thursday’s bad for one person, and Saturday’s not good for another. Monday would work—but hold up, the restaurant we want to try isn’t open that day. Let’s wait a couple of weeks. Somehow, though, the day never comes. Your friends forgot to follow up, or maybe you did. Either way, can you even call one another friends anymore?

Read the full article.

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Illustration by The Atlantic

Explore. Strange turns of phrase online—“he’s so me for this,” “if you even care”—have seeped into daily life. A going theory about the cause is that people have gotten stupider, Kaitlyn Tiffany writes. But maybe this isn’t true.

Read. In her debut novel, Too Soon, Betty Shamieh isn’t trying to educate or enlighten, Gal Beckerman writes. She’s telling a Palestinian story unlike any other.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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