While the AI boom seemingly began in Silicon Valley with OpenAI’s ChatGPT three years ago, 2025 has been proof that China is highly competitive in the artificial intelligence field — if not the frontrunner. The Eastern superpower is building its own open-source AI programs that have demonstrated high performance as they put ubiquity and effectiveness over profitability (while still managing to make quite a bit of money), the Wall Street Journal reports.
DeepSeek is probably the most well-known Chinese AI entity in the U.S., whose R1 reasoning model became popular at the start of the year. Being open-source, as opposed to proprietary, means these programs are free and their source code can be downloaded, used and tinkered with by anyone. Qwen, Moonshot, Z.ai and MiniMax are other such programs.
This is in contrast to U.S. offerings like ChatGPT, which, though free to use (up to a certain level of compute), are not made available to be modified or extracted by users. (OpenAI did debut its first open-source model, GPT-OSS, last month.)
American companies like OpenAI are racing to catch up — monopolies and industry-standard technologies are often the ones that are the most accessible and customizable. The Trump administration wagered that open-source models “could become global standards in some areas of business and in academic research” in July.
Want to join the conversation on how the security of information and data is impacting our global power struggle with China? Attend the 2025 Intel Summit on Oct. 2, from Potomac Officers Club. This GovCon-focused event will include a must-attend panel discussion called “Guarding Innovation: Safeguarding Research and IP in the Era of Strategic Competition With China.” Register today!
China’s Tech Progress Has Big Implications
The Intel Summit panel will feature, among other distinguished guests, David Shedd, a highly experienced intel community official who was acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (after serving as its deputy director for four years) and deputy director of national intelligence for policy, plans and procedures.
Shedd spoke to GovCon Wire in an exclusive interview about China-U.S. competition ahead of his appearance on the panel. He said that China’s progress in areas like AI should not be taken lightly and could portend greater problems and tension in the future.
“Sensitive IP or technological breakthroughs in things like AI, stealth fighter jets, or chemical formulas lost to an adversary do not happen in a vacuum. They lead, instead, to the very direct and very serious loss of the relative capabilities that define and underpin the balance and symbiosis of relationships within the international system,” Shedd commented.
Open-source models are attractive to organizations, WSJ said, because they can customize the programs and use them internally and protect sensitive data. In their Intel Summit panel session, Shedd and his counterparts will explore how the U.S. might embrace open-source more firmly as a way to stay agile in the realm of research and IP protection.
Who Is Stronger, America or China?
Shedd, along with co-author Andrew Badger, is publishing a book on December 2 entitled “The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets.” Published through HarperCollins, the volume will focus on the campaign of intellectual property theft the Chinese government is waging against the U.S.
Shedd elaborated for us:
“The PRC/CCP’s unrelenting pursuit of stolen information from the West and the U.S. in particular has propelled China’s economic and military might to heights previously unimaginable. Yet we collectively continue to underestimate the scale of this threat. It’s time for the world to fully comprehend the depth and breadth of China’s predatory behavior.
Our national security depends on how we respond—and whether we finally wake up to the reality that China has already declared an economic war on the West using espionage at the forefront of its campaign. It already has a decades-long head start.”
Don’t miss former DIA Acting Director David Shedd, as well as current IC leaders like Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas and CIA’s AI office Deputy Director Israel Soong at the 2025 Intel Summit on Oct. 2! Save your spot before it’s too late.
