The Pacific Divide

The Pacific Divide

China Solved AI Without Our Training Data. Now They're Writing The Rules

We Thought We Were Winning. We Already Lost.

Russ Wilcox's avatar
Russ Wilcox
Sep 23, 2025
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On my flight from Nashville to Boston after Autodesk University 2025, where I'd just spent three days discussing AI and infrastructure, I couldn't sleep. Not because of turbulence, but because of what DeepSeek achieved with pure reinforcement learning - no Western training data needed.

By the time we hit cruising altitude at 11:47 PM, I had three documen…

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