US export controls produced China's chip breakthroughs rather than preventing them: while China could comfortably import American chips, its own industry stalled for twenty years.

And remember that DeepSeek happened in times of crisis, urgency, not in times of comfort. A lot of these technological breakthroughs and leapfrogging happens in times of crisis. This is called crisis innovation. And you got to thank the US for that. When the Chinese were comfortably importing chips from the US, the whole industry stalled for 20 years.