You also have to realize deepseeks running costs are immensely lower than say any us lab by orders of magnitude.

Chinas grid is almost entirely renewable energy with strong investments in it. In the us not the case, some dcs are running on gas.

Also DeepSeek was smart. They strategically rolled out model sizes they could support even if the intelligence wasn't the world's best for that week in human history. Then they have incrementally and cheaply improved models since.

Not to mention they also built trust with open weight models rather then fear mongering. They are in the top 3 of the smartest most viable LLM labs out there.

China generates more electricity from coal than from all renewables put together (49.7% per https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Solar-Ove...).

They have more installed renewable capacity than coal, but renewables have low capacity factors, solar is less than 50% by definition. The renewable share is growing fairly rapidly, but it is by now means almost entirely renewable.