DeepSeek technology is “a wake-up call for the US technology industry,” commented President Donald Trump today in his address to the GOP body of lawmakers. The latest Chinese (so-called) Artificial Intelligence model triggered a selloff of certain US tech stocks most notably the NVidia Corporation shares. “Hopefully, the release of DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence in China should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Trump told a Republican congressional retreat in Miami.
Based on certain observations of lately, I dare to guess the concentration of the current US tech intelligentsia is not focused on producing better products but to extract the most money from the technologies available today. Some of the most intensively used tech pieces are venerable applications and tools that were almost fully developed during the 1990’s.
Having some experience in the development of applications I find that some of those tools have been declining in quality and ease of use as part of a strategy to sell ‘pseudo permissions’ to users trapped in certain environments. The tech moguls keep a series of pseudo-developments that add nothing to existing functionalities and capabilities but are designed to herd the users into traps where they are fleeced at will. Many tech CEO’s are hunting in their own chicken coop. We are all familiar with the barely revamped old software we are forced to buy again and again, etc.
So now, the ever patient Chinese have developed something bigger, better, cheaper in the good old American tradition of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and the XEROX-PARC labs crew that (in the 1970’s!) developed for the first time the very tools we are using to share these words.
One important change working against American primacy in developing new technologies (and strategical ways to operate businesses) has been the MBA programs. Let me clarify: what MBA program did Ford, Edison, or Jobs attend? Answer: NONE. Yet we continue to assume that business leaders can be developed in a university away from the very industries they will have to lead one day. Their training is effected by professors that (for the most part) cannot hack it in the real world. That is why they teach at universities. “The disciple is not above his master,” says Our Lord in Matthew 10:24. If those “teaching” future MBA’s have rarely mastered the complexities of life in a real business environment, then we have a case of dwarves teaching others how to be giants.
Think about it because all that the US is today is the result of keeping a technological edge throughout our young history. The current academic preoccupation with ideas that do not add a penny to the National Treasure should be extinguished quickly: we are wasting time and money in raising a crowd of completely useless individuals. Unless we quickly change course we may end up warming ourselves around a trash fire while our rivals take away what wiser and more capable generations gave us in trust.
More than anything we should resurrect the idea of creating “a better mousetrap” and that will not happen if we are not concentrating in serving the American public better. Quality, service, excellence are the arms of the 21st century Minuteman.
I’m just saying …
Quod scripsi, scripsi 