Sputnik 1: An exploded view. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1129358
Marc Andreesen likened the launch of the Chinese-made large language model, DeepSeek-R1, to the ‘Sputnik moment’, referring to the 1957 launch of the USSR’s Sputnik 1, the first satellite launched from earth. Much to the chagrin of the US – at the height of the Cold War with the USSR – the launch of Sputnik dramatically revealed a gap between the two superpowers. It encouraged significant US investment in science and its space program resulting in the Apollo missions; in Summer 1958, DARPA and NASA were established and the National Defense Education Act passed. There was an overall boost to US science and technology research and development.
In this post we unpack Andreesen’s Sputnik analogy to contextualise where we are in the ongoing tensions between the US and its allies and China that spill into geopolitics, trade, and technology (AI Now Institute, 2023), and ask if there might be other analogies to draw on. Analogies and metaphors are double-edged discursive tools; they can make unfamiliar and uncertain moments navigable, but in adopting them we also run the risk of locking ourselves into existing paradigms (Ganesh, 2022). When we adopt analogies or metaphors for AI (Maas, 2023), we must be attentive to what trajectories and path dependencies are set in motion.
Andreesen may not have realised that this is not the first time ‘Sputnik Moment’ is being used as an analogy for AI: AlphaGo was described as China’s ‘Sputnik Moment’. So was ChatGPT. Are we stuck in an endless circle of Sputnik Moments? What actually counts as a Sputnik Moment? Or does ‘Sputnik moment’ now just refer to geopolitical one-upmanship in science and technology?
Describing DeepSeek as a ‘Sputnik moment’ also reflects a much longer trajectory of using and misusing Cold War analogies and narratives in support of US industrial policy. Comparisons between AI competition and the US-Soviet ‘space race’ abound in US media, and the Cold War comparison similarly shapes legislation and policy. In 2021, the US Senator Tom Cotton advocated for a Bill banning visas to Chinese STEM students on the basis that “allowing China unfettered access to American research institutions is akin to granting Soviet scientists access to our critical laboratories during the Cold War” (McInerney 2024). The Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonprofit that emerged from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), states that it was inspired by Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger’s Cold War Rockefeller Project (1956). It aims to similarly plot a route forward for US techno-economy victory between now and 2030. There are historical precedents for the ways that technological breakthroughs can be misinterpreted. Think of the xenophobia directed towards Japanese products, people and companies generated by Japanese economic growth in the 1980s (Heale 2009).
The 1957 Sputnik 1 launch was not just a knock to US national prestige and scientific pride; it was interpreted as a security threat. If the Soviets could put a satellite in space they could build Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that could strike the USA. Because ICBMs are much faster than bombers, US security strategists worried that they could launch a ‘surprise attack’. This was summarised and popularized by the Gaither Commission report of 1957. The Sputnik Moment led directly to fears of the ‘missile gap’ and the US military ‘sprint’ to develop ICBMs. This was a mistake; the Soviets did not race to build ICBMs in the ‘moment of vulnerability’, that is, 1959-1962 (Belfield, 2022a; 2022b).
The launch of DeepSeek’s V3 and R1 models are disanalogous to Sputnik in that China did not strictly get to it first; DeepSeek followed (and to some extent copied) US AI companies’ existing models, and relied on US infrastructure (NVIDIA chips) to do so. However, the ‘DeepSeek Moment’ could prove to be analogous to the original ‘Sputnik Moment’ if – as others did back in 1957 – US political entrepreneurs are able to sell the ‘DeepSeek Moment’ as requiring a change in US policy. This could mean weakening the export controls (as called for by NVIDIA and Oracle) or open-weight-ing more US models (as called for by Meta and Andreesen). It would be acutely ironic as an analogy for the ‘Sputnik Moment’, as weakening the export controls and open-weighting more US models would help China. It would be as if the USSR launched the first satellite, saw the USA follow them a few years later, freaked out, and decided to sell their world-class rocket-making equipment directly to the USA as well as give away all their rocketry secrets for free.
The 1957 Sputnik launch and subsequent space race also triggered wider debates related to the role of science, technology, and policy in society. ‘The Moon and The Ghetto’ debate in the 1970s referred to policy as being much better at putting a man on the moon than solving socioeconomic problems, although subsequent analyses found that the space race of the ‘60s and 70s resulted in broad benefits across the US economy (Corrado et al, 2023). This narrative collapses different kinds of policymaking – to address racialised poverty and spur innovation in service of a competitive geopolitical race; and draws attention to where public resources and policy efforts are directed (Ulnicane, 2022)
Media theorist Jennifer Gabrys writes in Program Earth (2016) of the lasting legacy and significance of Sputnik 1, and its successors 2, and 3. These satellites were designed to deliver radio transmissions from space; over time they became part of a remote sensing apparatus that generated fine grained details about terrestrial ecologies from afar. What Gabrys refers to as the ‘programmable Earth’ is now, decades later, a planetary-scale assembly of satellites, sensors, monitoring systems, databases, scientific research, and citizen organising. It is this apparatus that enables global logistics; measurement of ecological data from carbon emissions to seismic activity; as well as how data is gathered about patterns of human activity and life.
The Apollo missions inspired by the competition kicked off by the original Sputnik Moment sent back one of the most iconic photographs: the first image of the earth taken from orbit, what we refer to as the Blue Marble. This image sparked a sense that despite our conflicts and differences, we inhabit a single shared planetary home. This aided the birth of environmentalism and contemporary Western movements for environmental rights and protection.
The Blue Marble also offers us an opportunity for imagining an alternative to a new space race, a new technological ‘Cold War’. With some consideration, we might reframe a Sputnik moment as one that evokes a sense of care and achievement rather than conflict.
With contributions from Haydn Belfield, Maya Indira Ganesh, Kerry McInerney, Sean O’Heigeartaigh, Inga Ulnicane, and the Global Politics of AI programme.
