There should be no debate that the Chinese communist regime is the biggest adversary and rival of the United States on a multitude of fronts, including the development of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, or AI.

Following the recent unveiling of the Chinese AI tool DeepSeek, which is reportedly cheaper, faster, and more efficient than the competitor AIs developed by U.S. companies, President Donald Trump's friend and ally Kevin O'Leary declared that China just "fired the first shot" in the coming "AI Wars."

In an op-ed for the Daily Mail, the "Shark Tank" co-host and wealthy business entrepreneur warned of the potentially dire consequences -- economically, militarily, and technologically -- of China surpassing the West in terms of the development of effective artificial intelligence tools.

China appears to take the lead in AI development

When the news of China's DeepSeek AI was first revealed this week, it sparked a massive sell-off of U.S. tech stocks totaling around $1 trillion in value, only some of which was later recovered by a rallying stock market.

The big concern, based on China's admittedly dubious claims, was that DeepSeek could outperform its U.S.-based competitor AIs at just a fraction of the cost while using older technology.

Indeed, DeepSeek claimed that its AI was developed and trained on around $6 million worth of old computer chips, while its biggest American rival, OpenAI, spent around $3 billion in just 2024 to develop and train its AI tool using the most advanced chips.

If the claims are true, O'Leary and others suggested that this could represent another so-called "Sputnik moment," or the sudden realization that the U.S. actually trails behind its rivals on a certain technological advancement, so named for the surprise in 1957 when the Soviet Union was the first nation to successfully launch a satellite into orbit, which prompted the Cold War's Space Race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

Why Chinese AI should be viewed as a threat

To be sure, O'Leary noted in his op-ed that there are reasons to be circumspect of China's claims about DeepSeek, as there are legitimate doubts about the supposed low costs of development or that it was trained using old technology, as there are suspicions that China has evaded U.S. sanctions to obtain cutting-edge computer chips or possibly even stole proprietary information from OpenAI to bolster its own AI tool.

That said, and regardless of how China was able to develop its purportedly more advanced AI tool, there are valid reasons that Americans should be concerned, though not yet panicked, about the possibility of Chinese domination in the realm of AI.

The first and most obvious concern is military supremacy, as O'Leary observed that "AI can be used to power autonomous weapon systems, command fleets of drones, and detect, track, and engage enemy threats in real-time. If China is able to create more intelligent, faster, and cheaper AI models than the US, they can use that to develop more effective weapons too."

A secondary but no less important concern is that of national security, given the mad rush this week of Americans to download the DeepSeek app onto their cell phones despite the real probability that, like Chinese-owned TikTok, the Chinese AI will exploit any and all information gained from U.S. users for its own benefits.

U.S. has a fighting chance against China under Trump's leadership

Yet, though concerned, O'Leary expressed optimism in his op-ed that "the U.S., under the leadership of President Donald Trump, is well positioned to win in this sphere if it continues to invest in AI."

He heralded Trump's executive order to bolster U.S. AI development by removing policy barriers imposed by the prior Biden-Harris administration, as well as his successful courting of hundreds of billions of dollars, foreign and domestic, to be invested in U.S.-based AI development, not to mention Trump's threat to economically cripple China with tariffs.

"As long as America recognizes DeepSeek for the threat that it is, there is no need to panic," O'Leary concluded. "Instead, just like with Sputnik, America must seize this challenge to innovate and regain AI supremacy once again."