The release of DeepSeek has upset American tech CEOs. Not very surprising, of course, considering they now have a capable competitor. But what stands out is how they justify their opposition.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic (creator of the popular Claude AI), argues for banning the export of powerful chips to China. Not because DeepSeek are "adversaries” but because their government has “committed human rights violations, has behaved aggressively on the world stage”. darioamodei.com/on-deep…

The irony of this moral argument coming from a US executive is hard to miss. The United States' history of military interventions, support for authoritarian regimes, and human rights violations with advanced weaponry means such criticism could just as easily be turned around to argue for restricting American access to AI technology.

On LinkedIn, Rene Bystron, the CEO of AI company DeltaGen, shares a video demonstrating how DeepSeek refuses to answer questions about the Chinese government's human rights abuses, while providing detailed responses about US government violations. Rene concludes: “If a model deliberately whitewashes some issues while amplifying others, we’re no longer talking about neutral AI—we’re talking about propaganda.” linkedin.com/posts/rene…

It’s no secret, of course, that there is censorship in China. So it’s no surprise that a Chinese company released a product that does not criticise the government. They would be breaking the law if it did.

But what caught my interest in Rene’s example was the candid response DeepSeek gave about the US government’s human rights violations. A more interesting test of propaganda for those in the US levelling criticism at China would be to compare how AI models discuss their home country's actions. While not bound by censorship laws, ChatGPT’s o3-mini produced a hedged and sanitized reply when I asked it about US human rights violations compared to DeepSeek's response.

This pattern of US tech leaders suddenly becoming concerned about a foreign country’s human rights record while showing almost no concern for their own country’s (much worse) record reminded me of an old Noam Chomsky quote on moral responsibility:

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”