(Original is https://www.theinformation.com/articles/deepseek-using-banne... but hardwalled)
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By nostrademons 2025-12-1019:0017 reply I thought this was common knowledge. DeepSeek’s Wikipedia entry says that they trained all their models on Nvidia chips procured before the U.S. embargo to China on them. It wouldn’t surprise me if they continued acquiring them through, well, less than legal means.
I also read somewhere (not Wikipedia) that they trained on ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini queries, basically feeding in the output of competitor’s LLMs as training data. Kinda surprised they didn’t run into model collapse problems, but they stole their training data from other people who stole their training data from data collections that arguably stole them from content creators. It’s bandits all the way down, so adding a little smuggling to that doesn’t surprise me.
By mongrelion 2025-12-1017:035 reply I recommend everyone to watch GamersNexus' documentary on the NVIDIA AI GPU black market. They explain how companies like DeepSeek can get a hold of chips that are otherwise banned by the US government to export to China
By codedokode 2025-12-1017:104 reply Sanctions just slightly increase the cost of obtaining an item, but don't make it impossible. Electronic components can be bought, oil can be sold, ChatGPT can be used via OpenRouter, sanctioned banks publish their apps under guise into App Store, etc. When there are 200 countries in the world, and money involved, you can get anything.
Sanctioned goods could be used to spread propaganda though, imagine, for example, if installing a NVIDIA GPU driver required answering questions about Tiananmen square incident.
