Transcript of 'We are in a tech war with China,' Kevin O'Leary says on the rise of AI

All right, so President Trump says, Sweeping tariffs for computer chips are on the way. His pledge comes as Chinese AI app Deep Seq sends shockwaves through Wall Street and potentially triggers an AI arms race. Say that 10 times fast. Kevin O'Leary is here, chairman of O'Leary Ventures. Kevin, I couldn't wait to talk to you today because I wonder what your take is on all this. There was a little bit of a shock on Wall Street, right? There was a big reaction with the tech stocks and the Nasdaq and a big sell-off because it seems that China may have figured out how to do a lot of this stuff better and cheaper. What's your take?

First of all, there's a tremendous amount of skepticism regarding this Deep Seq product, whether Nvidia chips are used or not or earlier versions of Nvidia chips.

A $6 million price from the desk of a hedge fund manager.

I don't believe it. No one does.

This is a fact I think people should really wake up to. We are in a propaganda war with China.

We're in We're in economic war with China. We're in a technology war with China, and hopefully, I hope we don't get there, military war with China around Taiwan at some point.

The country with the best AI is going to win the future of warfare in many ways, propaganda being a big thing. Now, if you put Deep Seek on your phone, it better be a burner. This is my Deep Seek phone. This is my TikTok phone. This phone thinks I live in Nampen, Cambodia. I'm taking care of myself. Everybody else should understand what they're doing here. Very risky to put this stuff on your phones.

Yeah, well, I got to call you after the show, Kevin, and figure out how you did that so that I could do it myself. Your sentiments about Deep Seek are shared by our Jackie Deangelas, who used to follow tech stocks for a hedge fund. Here's what what we said earlier today.

What they essentially did here was copy technology that was already existing, that we had innovated here in the United States. I want to see how they innovate on their own when AI goes to the next level. You got something new, you got something interesting, put that out and let's see what you can do. You took something existing and you did it cheaper, that's the story of tech. I don't think it was this huge watershed moment.

In addition, we discovered by running some queries that the information is completely culled, it would seem, by the Chinese government.

It's a propaganda war. Bottom line here, this is a fallout from the TikTok narrative that started a few weeks ago. We've got to really figure out what the game plan is when we bring apps to the population. We have to decide because this app itself breaches that act of Congress. If it's scraping data, and if you actually install it, it's going to ask for your email address. In the case of Google Mail, it looks like it's scraping it. Everything you've ever emailed that's sitting on the server domestically is going back to China. That sounds like a breach of the act of Congress. We're going to get into a bit of a war here, taking these things down if they're breaching the laws that say you can't steal data from America American citizens. The bigger issue, which is going to have to get resolved even on TikTok, is maybe it's time to give data back to users. We don't have all this litigation that's coming from our own country and from other foreign countries and from users and psychologists who care about the mental state of young people. There's a whole lot of stuff that's falling out.

On top of all that, one other derivative, unforeseen consequence, check out that bill that Senator Lindsay Graham is putting out there. He's saying that all of these Chinese companies have a secret golden share that forces them to give data back. 285 of them are listed on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. As far as I know, that's illegal. There's a whole lot of stuff going on here, and it ain't good.

Well, we know that you are in it because we know you're looking at companies like TikTok. President Trump said this just yesterday. These were remarks in Doural about that. Listen.

I have a little bias toward TikTok right now. Pardon me if I'm a little bit... I became a little bit jaded toward TikTok, but we'll see what happens. We're going to have a lot of people bidding on it.

I don't know. Maybe I've missed something, but where are you in this bidding war, Mr. O'leary?

Frank and I are still in it, and I think we're at the cutting edge because whoever buys it, you're going to have to solve for that act of Congress and the 9 to 0 decision from the Supreme Court that says, Specifically, you can't use a single line of the 5 billion lines of Chinese ESE code. That's why I'm saying at the end of the day, why don't we solve this problem once and for all? We'll just rewrite the thing, make sure that it abides by the laws of the United States, and we'll give the data back to the consumers. I don't want to be sued. Either it is Frank. We're tired of all this litigation. You own your data, you decide if you want to share it. If we make money advertising to you because you want to be advertised to, we'll cut you in on the deal. We'll give you a taste of the revenue. Wet your beek, so to speak. There's six million small businesses making a living on this. I want to save it, that's for sure. And let them invest beside us. That's part of the whole aspect of this deal that Frank and I put together.

Just go to wonderfultiktok. Com, register your interest. If you're an American and you want to own a piece beside us, you got it. You put up 1,500 bucks, you're right beside me.

Well, Trump is suggesting he'd like to see a bidding war for TikTok, so we'll see how it goes. And judging by what we saw with the Nasdaq when we had the bug up there, it seems like it's mostly gotten over what happened yesterday. But so we'll keep watching it. Kevin, it was great to catch up with you.

Thanks so much. What is the dollar amount that you're in for before you go?

We started the bidding at $20 billion cash.

Well, that would be pennies on the dollar for what it's actually worth, right?

Well, without the algorithm, what's it worth? Because we're not buying the algorithm, nor can anybody else. So I don't know what they're talking about to price it more. The last trade for the whole company was a $230 billion valuation. 8% represents what we've got here in the United States. That means 20 billion the price on the table right now.

All right, we'll see how it goes. Thank you.

I have so many more questions. We'll have to have you back soon. All right.

Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it.

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