Commentary: DeepSeek – how a Chinese AI company just changed the rules of tech-geopolitics
Washington’s steps were part of its so-called” small-yard-high-fence” method, which aims to control who gets exposure to corporate American technology and who gets locked out of the garden.  ,
But perhaps the most significant result was that, from a techno-nationalist view, Washington actually sorted the world’s governments into three different groups. By design, this activity was intended to exacerbate the division of the global tech landscape into distinct subsets.
America’s former allies and surveillance partners, who all have generally unrestricted access to the yard, are included in the second class. This includes Canada, Australia, the UK and Western Europe, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea.
The next group consists of a large chunk of “middle-countries” including those in Eastern Europe, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and all of Southeast Asia.
These countries face higher limits, and, by architecture, Washington may push them to pick sides between the US and China when it comes to trading and partnering around corporate systems. This would include the creating of AI systems, information areas, energy infrastructure and additional power-multiplier systems.
The third class, consisting of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, faces the most constraints, and is basically banned from it move from Group 1 and Group 2. Those who pass restricted technology to these will be targeted and punished.
However, they may also avoid having to pick sides if public and private entities in any of the three country groups can use open-sourced conceptual AI ( and finally artificial general intelligence ) to achieve their individual goals and lessen their dependence on the two international tech superpowers. This would change the present-day techno-nationalist calculus and give more agency to (especially ) middle-tier countries.