Why China’s young super geeks could herald the West’s ‘darkest hour’: Their AI is cheaper, quicker and better… no wonder the world fears a ‘Sputnik’ moment [Video]

19:58 EST 28 Jan 2025, updated 21:04 EST 28 Jan 2025

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, causing shock and alarm across the West.

It had been generally assumed that the US was far more technologically advanced than the Russians, and the rude awakening provided by the ‘Sputnik crisis’ sparked the famous Space Race between the two superpowers.

Now, a leading Silicon Valley tech investor has warned of a new ‘Sputnik moment’. 

That’s how billionaire Marc Andreessen this week described China‘s latest breakthrough in the battle to develop Artificial Intelligence – currently the defining issue for the tech world.

The release of a cheap but remarkably powerful new generative AI platform by a Chinese tech company called DeepSeek has turned out to be just as unsettling for American self-confidence as the appearance of a Soviet spacecraft orbiting the Earth.

Andreessen, a major donor to Donald Trump, described the software – a ‘chatbot’ …