Kevin O‘Leary on AI Advancements Threatening National Security: ’The American People Have to Be on Their Guard’

Kevin O'Leary attends the 9th Annual NFL Honors in Miami, Fla., on Feb. 1, 2020. Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Kevin O'Leary, businessman and investor best known for the hit television series “Shark Tank,” is sending a stark warning to cell phone users amid growing advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

In an editorial for The Daily Mail on Jan. 29, the 70-year-old expressed his concerns about AI capabilities and developing models after investors responded with a sell-off to news about Chinese tech start-up DeepSeek.

“$1 trillion in stock market value was wiped off the books of American tech companies after Chinese startup DeepSeek created an AI-tool that rivals the best that U.S. firms have to offer,” he wrote.

“AI can be used to power autonomous weapon systems, command fleets of drones, and detect, track, and engage enemy threats in real time,” O'Leary added.

Founded in 2023, DeepSeek is an AI company that over the last week presented a new AI language model similar to Open AI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini chatbot.

DeepSeek claims their model however, contains similar capabilities but can operate at a fraction of the cost in comparison to American companies.

For example, the company said it spent $5.6 million dollars to train its model, whereas according to Goldman Sachs, other major U.S. companies are on track to invest nearly $1 trillion dollars in generative AI in the coming years.

However, experts and observers say that DeepSeek is likely hiding its use of banned Nvidia chips and also has not include other costs in the training and development pipeline.

Others have pointed out that the app censors on issues such as human rights, essentially parroting the line of the Chinese Communist Party.

DeepSeek’s founder Liang Wenfeng reportedly admitted in 2022 to having accumulated a stockpile of Nvidia’s highest-powered H100 chips, which were banned for export to China by the Biden administration. Alexandr Wang, CEO of the U.S.-based Scale AI, reference the comments in an recent interview with CNBC on Jan. 23, saying that he believes DeepSeek has 50,000 Nvidia H100 chips that they “obviously” can’t talk about due to the U.S. ban.

Shortly after its debut, DeepSeek’s AI assistant became the No. 1 downloaded free app on Apple’s iPhone store, something O'Leary believes is a direct threat to national security.

“The American people have to be on their guard. If you download the app, you better ask who’s watching and who’s listening. From what I can tell, it scrapes your emails and personal data,” he wrote.

But on Jan. 29, DeepSeek said in an update it would be temporarily limiting user registrations due to “large-scale malicious attacks” targeting its services. It then implemented restrictions to limit users to those with a mobile phone number from mainland China.

DeepSeek’s latest app comes days after President Trump announced the new “Stargate Project,” investing $500 billion dollars in private sector investment with OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle, to build AI infrastructure in the United States.

“I believe that the U.S., under the leadership of President Donald Trump, is well positioned to win in this sphere if it continues to invest in AI,” O'Leary said.

OpenAI said the company would allocate $100 billion dollars immediately and reaffirms the project will boost the employment, economic, and national security sector in the nation.

“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” read the press release about Stargate.

“This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”

The National Security Agency (NSA) is well aware of the potential harms adversaries are capable of using by exploiting AI technologies to compete with the United States.

However, through technical expertise and extensive threat insights, the NSA believes they hold the capabilities to curb any threats along with protecting critical systems.