In January, Chinese technology company DeepSeek launched its R1 AI model. Billed as equivalent in capability to market leader OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but much cheaper, it soared to the top of download charts.
In the United States, a spooked market quickly moved money out of tech. Tech giant Nvidia had surged to a market capitalisation of $1 trillion, $2 trillion and then $3 trillion on the back of the AI boom, but saw billions wiped off its value.
American domination of the AI sector had appeared complete. The combination of cutting-edge technology, finance and expertise required didn’t seem to exist anywhere else. Now, everyone from big tech to governments was sent into a panic. China had been underestimated and the market had to adjust to a rival with a different set of rules and philosophy.
This is not the first time a geopolitical rival has stolen a technological march on the US. On October 4th, 1957, radios picked up a faint beep drifting down from space. The Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite.
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There were obvious military implications; putting a transmitter into orbit meant that the capability to deliver nuclear warheads across the planet was close. However, having emerged from the second World War as an atomic superpower with a vast economy and infrastructure largely unscathed by the conflict, most Americans took their technological superiority for granted. So why had Soviet scientists beaten them to space?
Before 1958, federal control of education was limited. States and local boards set their own graduation rules and largely controlled the curriculum, with science rarely prioritised. Rural and segregated schools were hit hardest; many had no dedicated science room at all.
The Soviet Union was portrayed as a faceless, bureaucratic nightmare that demanded obedience above all else. Ironically, the US experienced a mirror image with the loyalty‑oath craze of the early 1950s. A majority of states demanded teachers sign anti‑communist pledges, while being accused of subversion could end a career. Teaching anything even mildly politically controversial was fraught with risk.
No topic illustrated the caution of pre‑Sputnik science better than evolution. A series of laws based on the 1925 Butler Act banned teaching human evolution across the south and midwest. Publishers, wary of losing sales in conservative districts, quietly deleted Darwin. The 1956 edition of leading textbook Modern Biology had removed every reference to human evolution. Darwinism was viewed not only as irreligious but materialist and therefore suspiciously close to communism
In September 1958, Congress passed the National Defence Education Act, allocating more than $1 billion (around €9.6 billion today) of federal funding to science, maths, and languages. But it also added a loyalty pledge; anti-communism had not been abandoned. US president Dwight D Eisenhower ordered the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), while the Pentagon launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa, later Darpa when “Defence” was added) to fund high‑risk research.
Education quickly became a national concern. A series of three colour‑coded biology texts was published in 1963 by a nationwide co-ordinating body. Each treated evolution as biology’s organising principle, overturning the omissions of the 1950s. Within five years, half of American secondary pupils used one of the books and evolution was back in the mainstream.
Similarly, mathematicians used National Science Foundation grants to fund textbooks that introduced set theory, symbolic logic and bases other than 10. Many parents were nonplussed, and there was some resistance to this “new” maths, but the intent was clear: train pupils to think abstractly and prepare them to compete internationally.
AI is an obvious Sputnik analogue, but the climate emergency is another
At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jerrold Zacharias and the Physical Science Study Committee set out to rebuild high-school physics. Deciding that the printed textbook wasn’t enough, they went after the best visual talent they could find.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Winton Hoch had shot Joan of Arc, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Quiet Man, but also earned a physics degree from California Institute of Technology. Hoch was one of several experts enlisted to produce Hollywood-quality educational films for the American science classroom. For many teenagers, science was no longer abstract, but aspirational.
By the time of the first moon landing in 1969, around one-tenth of total American research spending came through Nasa. Today, the agency holds 6,500 patents. A simple technological imperative, to regain initiative in the space race, had reorientated US science policy and, to an extent, society.
AI is an obvious Sputnik analogue, but the climate emergency is another, and even more pressing. Let’s hope that the same level of political will that put a person on the moon can keep this planet habitable.
Stuart Mathieson is research manager with InterTradeIreland
