Data is the New Natural Resource: How AI is Changing the Paradigm of Cybersecurity, Geopolitics and The Way We See Technical Innovation

By Ed Vasko, CISSP, C|CISO

DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the AI sector but, with each passing day, seems to be more of a tempest in a teapot from a technological innovation perspective. While it contributes micro-innovations to the AI platform space - especially in regards to price / transaction reduction - there is still a clear need for continued macro-innovations to occur. Although undeniably an accomplishment of moderate reasoning with limited hardware – if those hardware claims are true – ultimately the core of DeepSeek's innovation lies more in how it uses already existing research (and possibly OpenAI's infrastructure) and methods in a novel way that enables an impressive degree of efficiency. For all of DeepSeek's initial market disruption, its more advanced capabilities remain to be seen. Innovation is not quite the same as invention and distillation is not a new concept in the field of AI.?

The security concerns presented by DeepSeek, on the other hand, are serious. Last week, researchers discovered DeepSeek's login and account creation infrastructure uses architecture from China Mobile, a state-owned telecom widely believed to be integrally-linked to the Chinese military and banned from operating in the U.S. And that's on top of the fact that data collected from DeepSeek goes directly to Chinese servers, prompting the U.S. military to quickly ban DeepSeek's use.

Italy and Australia have outright banned DeepSeek and both France and Ireland are considering following suit.?

Through a different lens, you would think the release of an open source AI model was an act of war. I believe that analogy is not as exaggerated as it may first seem.?

Data is the New Natural Resource?

The United States is built on a foundation of leveraging natural resources, whether its own or those of other countries.?

The oil fields of Texas and agricultural bounty are the result of the U.S. winning the Mexican-American war and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. We benefit from the timber, gypsum and natural gas of Louisiana and the entire breadbasket thanks to the real estate deal of the 19th century. The precious metals and energy resources of Alaska were also a land purchase, ultimately vindicating poor Secretary of State William Seward.??

Internationally, the U.S.leverages the natural resources of other countries. According to the USGS, as of 2016 the U.S. was 100 percent reliant on commodities including rare earth minerals. Nearly half of the foreign sources of those minerals come from China.?

Today, more than physical resources, however, the U.S. also benefits from the labor of other countries through its outsourcing and offshoring of the service industry.

Is China Taking a Page from the Book We Wrote??

We know technology has changed how wars are waged. Much of the cybersecurity field is focused on protecting non-kinetic – though no less potentially life-threatening or dangerous – cyber attacks from adversarial nation states. The existence of the United States Cyber Command underscores how seriously we as a nation take cyber threats. No modern army fights a war solely to obtain physical geographic territory anymore. Warfare in the modern world primarily consists of proxy wars like those ravaging Africa or perpetual cyberattack and defense between antagonistic nation states.?

Conquest of the digital realm may be impossible, but at least establishing and maintaining effective control of it is of vital national interest. National dominance — whether economic, political or sometimes territorial — is impossible without maintaining control of not only data itself, but where it goes and how it is stored and accessed (or not).?

China understands this. The conversation about whether DeepSeek represents a true tech disruption is important, but the more urgent issue is what DeepSeek's ability to disrupt global markets tells us about the power of data itself in a cyber landscape. There is no denying that by likely using American data and methodologies, DeepSeek successfully threw a grenade through NVIDIA's window. Beyond that direct market disruption, leveraging DeepSeek to gather, analyze, and methodically develop adversarial models from the data it collects - through which other impacts could occur - is just a matter of time.??

A New Way to Treat Data ?

Viewed through this lens, the root cause of cyber attacks by hostile nation states becomes crystal clear: our data is a precious resource that can be clearly used for economic, geopolitical, and even kinetic, impacts.??

The United States must treat data the same as it would any valuable natural resource: as a way to foster trade; a bargaining chip for soft political capital; and yes, as a bludgeon of brute force when necessary during a time of war.

For legitimate global trade dealings, DeepSeek presents an opportunity to devise ways to do just this. Rather than an outright ban as Italy and Australia have done, we need to remain focused on the American resources – NVIDIA's American hardware, OpenAI's American code, and ultimately America's ceaseless drive for technological advancement.

DeepSeek isn't Sputnik, but it can be the catalyst for a radical shift in the way America views, assesses and leverages its data, just as the Russians nudged the Americans from jogging in the space race to sprinting.??

So the question becomes how to build a foundation for defending our data to the degree possible while also maximizing the ways we can benefit from it.?