Violent weather exacerbated by climate change fueled hunger and food insecurity across Latin America and the Caribbean in 2023, according to a new United Nations report.

Extreme weather drove up crop prices in multiple countries in the region in 2023, the report, which was written by several UN agencies including the World Food Program (WFP), says.

Hot weather and drought, intensified by the El Niño weather phenomenon, raised the price of corn in Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, while heavy rain in Ecuador caused a 32 to 54 percent increase in wholesale prices in the same year.

Though the report credits social safety nets with a measurable decrease in undernourishment throughout Latin America, it notes that the region’s poorest and most vulnerable populations are still more likely to suffer from food insecurity due to climate change – especially rural people.

Quoting a 2020 study, the report states that 36% of 439 small farms surveyed in rural Honduras and Guatemala experienced “episodic food insecurity due to extreme weather events.”

“In more rural areas they…don’t have a lot of resources to be able to weather a poor harvest,” said Ivy Blackmore, a researcher affiliated with the University of Missouri who studied nutrition and agriculture among Indigenous farming communities in Ecuador.

“You don’t generate as much income. There’s not as much nutritious food around, so they sell what they can, and then they purchase the cheapest thing that’ll fill them up,” she added.

In the communities she studied, erosion from prolonged rain led farmers to plant on virgin grassland nearby.

“They might have a couple of good harvests. Then the erosion continues, and they dig up more,” Blackmore said. “There’s extreme erosion going on because they’re just having to sustain themselves in the short term without being able to address these long-term consequences.”

As extreme weather increases food prices, some consumers gravitate toward cheaper, but less nutritious, ultra-processed foods. This is a particularly dangerous trend in Latin America, the UN report says, where “the cost of healthy diets is the highest in the world” and both childhood and adult obesity have risen markedly since 2000.

Denmark said on Monday it would spend 14.6 billion Danish kroner ($2.05 billion) boosting its military capabilities in the Arctic – a decision that comes amid continuing furor following US President Donald Trump’s renewed interest in controlling Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

The agreement aims to “improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region,” according to a statement from Denmark’s Ministry of Defense.

“At the same time, support to Allies and NATO’s efforts in the Arctic and North Atlantic is essential to strengthening overall security and defense,” the statement added.

As part of the investment package, Denmark will fund three new Arctic naval vessels, two long-range drones with the ability to conduct surveillance over large areas and increased admission to Arctic basic military training.

“We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defense in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark’s minister of defense, said. “For this reason, we must strengthen our presence in the region. That is the objective of this agreement, which paves the way for further initiatives already this year.”

Vivian Motzfeldt, Denmark’s minister of statehood and foreign affairs, added that “Greenland is facing a changing security landscape.”

The announcement comes after the European Union said it was “not negotiating” on the sovereignty of Greenland

Asked if the EU should negotiate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Denmark, EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said: “No, we are not negotiating on Greenland. Of course, we are supporting our member state Denmark and its autonomous region, Greenland.”

‘US shifts to a more transactional approach’

Trump, who took office on January 20, has previously described US control of Greenland as an “absolute necessity.” Both Greenland and Denmark have said previously that the island is not for sale.

The question to Kallas on Monday came after she told a press conference that Europe needed to “close ranks” as the “United States shifts to a more transactional approach” in its foreign relations.

She told the same conference that the US was an “important ally” and that America and Europe were “very much interlinked,” but added that “it’s not like somebody is telling us what to do and we are following” and warned against further speculation over Greenland.

“We shouldn’t also go into speculation about the ‘what ifs,’ because this is not the situation right now,” she said.

Still, US and Danish officials have said they don’t understand the incoming president’s obsession with acquiring Greenland, which Trump has called “an absolute necessity,” particularly because the US already has a decades-old defense agreement with the territory that has allowed the US to build up a significant military presence — including troops and radar systems — on the world’s largest island.

Despite those rebuttals, the debate over Greenland’s future has been stirred up by growing speculation over its independence movement.

In his New Year’s speech, Greenland’s prime minister said the island should break free from “the shackles of colonialism” – though the speech did not mention the United States.

Eight of the remaining hostages set to be released by Hamas in the first phase of a ceasefire agreement with Israel are dead, according to an Israeli government spokesperson.

The rest of the 33 hostages who were expected to be returned from Gaza to their families are alive, David Mencer said in a briefing on Monday, including seven who have already been returned. Israeli authorities were notified of the hostages’ status after receiving a list from Hamas, he said.

According to Mencer, the eight dead were killed by Hamas. The Palestinian militant group has not commented on their cause of death.

The first phase of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal – which started on January 19 – will see dozens of hostages taken captive by Hamas and other armed groups in the October 7 attacks being freed.

Of those hostages expected to be released, 21 are men, three are women, and two are children, ranging in age from two years old to 86 years old, according to the forum and the Israeli government press office.

Israel will also release almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first part of the agreement.

The ceasefire delivered the first reprieve for the people of Gaza, after more than 15 months of Israeli bombing following the October 7 attacks.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians on Monday began returning home to northern Gaza, large swathes of which have been razed by more than a year of relentless airstrikes and ground raids.

Freed hostages spent over eight months in tunnels, says Israeli officer

The most recent hostages to be released from captivity were four female Israeli soldiers freed on January 25 as part of the long-anticipated ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Several of the seven hostages released from Gaza in the past week had been held in tunnels for more than eight months, according senior Israeli military officer.

Seven women released so far showed symptoms of mild starvation with low vitamin levels, said Avi Benov, the deputy chief of the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps. Their mental health, he said, was a very complicated issue.

The former hostages were given vitamins and modest amounts of food during their first medical check-up at Israel’s Re’im military base, the officer said. They were asked if they wanted to shower and change clothes before meeting their parents and were reassured they were safe, he added.

Benov claimed that Hamas had fed them better and allowed them to wash and change clothes in the days before their release, for propaganda purposes.

He said the younger hostages were in better shape, adding that when the older captives start returning they will probably be in worse condition, having spent more than a year in captivity.

Benov declined to answer a question about whether there were physical signs the hostages were tortured. “They will tell their own stories,” he said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center has accused Elon Musk of insulting victims of Nazism after the billionaire told a German far-right political party that the country needed to “move beyond” the “guilt” of the past.

Musk made the comments in a surprise video address at an election campaign launch for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Saturday.

“Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents,” he said.

“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he added.

Musk’s remarks mirrored the AfD’s long-held position that Germany should stop atoning for crimes committed by the Nazis in the past.

Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, warned against any move to bury the legacy of Nazism. Writing in a post on X, which is owned by Musk, Dayan said that “the remembrance and acknowledgement of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society,” and that “failing to do so is an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany.”

Musk has taken an increasing interest in European politics and several leaders on the continent have accused him of interfering in their affairs and promoting dangerous figures.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned Musk’s comments as “ominous” and “all too familiar,” noting that they came “only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

In his Saturday address, Musk said it was important “that people take pride in Germany and being German,” a remark that was met with rapturous cheers.

Musk also addressed the issue of immigration – a key issue in Germany’s upcoming general election on February 23 – urging AfD co-leader Alice Weidel and her supporters not to lose their national pride in “some kind of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”

It is not the first time in recent days that Musk has drawn scrutiny for his apparent support for the far-right. Last week, Musk faced a backlash after he made a gesture at a post-inauguration rally last week that some commentators said resembled a fascist salute.

At a rally following US President Donald Trump’s inauguration last Monday, Musk brought his right arm towards his chest and then extended it towards the audience, drawing scrutiny as the gesture bears similarities to the Nazi or Roman salute used by fascist leaders in Germany and Italy.

Musk pushed back on the criticism, writing on X, “the ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

German chancellor Olaf Scholz – a frequent target of Musk’s barbs – told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: “Everyone is free to express their opinion in Germany and Europe, including billionaires… but we do not accept support for far-right positions.” Musk responded on X: “Shame on Oaf Schitz!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Musk, saying that he was “falsely smeared” amid a storm of international condemnation.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) initially dismissed it as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm.”

However, in response to Musk posting a series of Nazi puns to social media on Thursday, the ADL hit out at “inappropriate and highly offensive jokes that trivialize the Holocaust.”

Despite the scrutiny, Musk has continued to voice his support for populist political movements that have galvanized numerous European elections. He has also drawn parallels between the political climate in Germany and the United States while emphasizing the global impact the approaching election could have.

Israel has inflicted “serious and sometimes life-threatening danger” on pregnant and postpartum women and girls in Gaza over 15 months of bombardment and siege, according to a new Human Rights Watch report.

The 50-page report, “‘Five Babies in One Incubator’: Violations of Pregnant Women’s Rights Amid Israel’s Assault on Gaza,” was published by the US-based advocacy group on Tuesday.

It details attacks on medical facilities and healthcare workers in Gaza that “directly harmed women and girls during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period” and says the war has increased the risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, stillbirth, postpartum hemorrhage and underweight newborns.

HRW accused Israel of enforcing an unlawful blockade, a near-total ban on water, food and electricity, starvation as a method of war, attacks on the medical system, and repeated forcible transfer – violating the right to follow-up and postnatal care for pregnant women and girls, and their children.

Israel is “obligated to use all the resources at its disposal to ensure that everyone in Gaza, including pregnant women and girls and their children, are able to enjoy their human right to health,” the report said. “This includes ensuring the full restoration of Gaza’s healthcare system so that all patients, including pregnant women and babies, have access to quality medical care.”

HRW repeated allegations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel strongly denies. Israel has also been taken to the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice, on allegations of genocide.

Israel’s onslaught since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks has wiped out entire families, decimated the medical system, and supplies, spawning starvation, disease and displacement.

At least 47,306 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health there. Of those, 12,316 were women and another 808 were babies under aged one, Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) reported on January 24. Although a fragile ceasefire began last week, the survival challenges facing new and expecting mothers in the enclave remains dire.

Babies dying ‘in front of us’

More than 1,054 health workers and medical professionals have been killed, including at least six pediatricians and five obstetrician-gynecologists, HRW said, citing the health ministry in Gaza.

As of January, emergency obstetric and newborn care is available at seven out of 18 partially functioning hospitals in Gaza, four out of 11 field hospitals, and one community health center, according to HRW.

The rate of miscarriage in Gaza has increased by 300% since October 7, 2023, the International Planned Parenthood Federation said in July. Two Palestinian women told HRW their fetuses died after they were injured by explosive weapons attacks that also killed their partners.

Even for those who make it to a medical facility, hospitals offer little respite. Women can be “rushed out” within hours of childbirth because staff are overwhelmed by scores of patients injured by bombardment, according to HRW.

“I did not get complete and sufficient privacy during my birth. I was very afraid of bleeding,” said Musa. “I faced great difficulty in giving birth due to fear of the shelling next to the hospital.

“My husband was informed that I had to leave immediately … It was a very difficult moment, and the cleanliness in the hospital was non-existent.”

For pregnant women in Gaza, the stress of trying to survive attacks coupled with food and water shortages could weaken the immune system, harm the fetus, and lead to preterm birth, HRW said. Dr Adnan Radi, a medic at Al Awda Hospital, in northern Gaza, told the agency that most of the babies delivered by staff have severely low birthweight and are dying of perinatal asphyxia.

“We try to intubate the babies. Sometimes it has helped, but the picture is very gloomy,” Dr. Radi said in the HRW report, adding that “in the last month I can remember more than six babies with low birthweight dying in front of me.”

‘I started begging that God would take the baby’

In sprawling displacement camps, parents say they cannot find enough food, clean water, warmth or sanitation facilities. Instead, caregivers resort to feeding babies with infant formula made from dirty water, compounding the risk of dehydration, hepatitis A and skin infections according to HRW.

Pregnant and breastfeeding women sharing toilets in crowded spaces are especially vulnerable to infections including UTIs, which can lead to preterm labor, low birth weight, and stillbirths, according to Al Shurafa, a program officer for MAP.

“Women may feel uncomfortable or self-conscious breastfeeding in such conditions,” said Al Shurafa. “This lack of privacy can lead to stress and anxiety, which in turn affects the mother’s ability to relax and establish a successful breastfeeding routine.”

More than 48,000 pregnant women are experiencing emergency or catastrophic food insecurity, the UN’s reproductive rights agency said in December.

At least 56 children have starved to death, according to Zahir Al-Wahidi, the director of Information Systems at Gaza’s health ministry. Eight infants and newborns have reportedly died from hypothermia, the UN’s children’s agency said in January.

“The severity and ferocity of the suffering was concentrated in physical displacement,” she said. “I was afraid that we would be exposed to direct shelling or missile fragments, and from the rain and cold and the flooding of the tents.”

Israa Mazen Diab al-Ghul, 30, a pregnant woman displaced in Nuseirat, central Gaza, told HRW that in early 2024, she and her relatives had nothing to drink but sea water for two days. “I vomited, and I was worried it would kill the baby … I started begging that God would take the baby, so I wouldn’t need to give birth during this war.”

Communications disruptions impede womens’ access to hotlines and online information, while power cuts disrupt ultrasounds, and blood and urine tests, HRW said.

“Everything is scarce,” said Rahaf Umm Khaled, 21, who is four months pregnant. “I want the war to end completely. I want to give birth to my child in good health, and I want us to return to our homes safely and soundly.”

The flight landed safely in the middle of the morning, the sun occasionally bursting through the clouds over Guatemala City.

But instead of taxiing to International Arrivals, the plane headed towards the military side of the airport as fighter jets screamed above, weaving around in training exercises.

When the aircraft doors opened, dozens of men and women were ushered onto the tarmac where they were greeted by an emotional Guatemalan Vice President Karin Herrera and other officials and then led into a reception center for returnees.

“Good morning!” one shouted. “How are you, paisanos (countrymen)?”

This was a chartered deportation flight from the United States, an operation that’s gained new attention since the inauguration of President Donald Trump last week and his promises to remove millions of undocumented migrants.

If there was any shame or animosity when the flight left Alexandria, Louisiana, just before sunrise, none of that was evident when the migrants walked back on Guatemalan soil, many shuffling in open sneakers — the laces having been taken by US authorities in a common safety practice, and never returned.

The passengers – all adults on this flight – were welcomed with cookies and coffee and efficient processing in the migrant reception center.

She did not want to discuss the weekend spat between Colombia and the US over the use of military planes, saying her focus was on her citizens.

“We are committed to their integrity and their basic rights,” Herrera said.

Some of the returning Guatemalans had lived and worked in the US for years. Some were fluent in English. But they had all entered without permission or documents and so were subject to deportation.

The migrants left the US as criminals, telling us they were handcuffed on board until they were out of US airspace on their flight south. But whether they were looking forward to being back on home turf or not, the official reception they got was mostly very warm, as if they had been badly missed. A few did remain in handcuffs and were escorted by police, expected to face action for crimes alleged to have been committed in their homeland.

But for the majority, they sat with snacks as names were called and temporary identification papers were handed out. “Undocumented” no more.

They might have skills and abilities that could find them work and a good life back in their home country, benefiting themselves and Guatemala too, officials said.

The returning migrants applauded Herrera after she gave a short speech in the arrival hall but each has their own view on whether they will heed calls to stay.

‘It feels dangerous in the US now’

Sara Tot-Botoz had lived for 10 years in Alabama, working in construction, roofing and car repair, as well as caring for two of her children, now adults, and grandchildren.

She said she had been driving away from a Walmart with one of those grandchildren about seven months ago when she says police pulled her over and cited her for not having him in a car seat.

After her immigration status was discovered, she spent two months in jail in Alabama and then five months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Louisiana, she said.

Once processed back into Guatemala, she said her first thought was to get out of the shapeless gray sweats she was wearing and into her indigenous clothes. And then to eat some good food.

Tot-Botoz, 43, stood waiting for her belongings. Only a handful of the migrants had suitcases for their things. Most others waited for a large plastic sack to be handed over containing all that they had taken from the US.

As others charged their phones at free power banks to call friends or relatives, Tot-Botoz changed and hurried out onto the street outside.

There was another of her children, a daughter, now 25, who had not seen her mother since she was 15.

The two women hugged each other for a long time, each crying.

They had not been in contact since Tot-Botoz was taken to detention and while there was much to catch up on, for a few minutes they just wanted to hold each other.

A lingering American dream

But Fidel Ambrocio said he still saw his future in the US.

He said he had lived there for a total of 19 years, first arriving as a teen and voluntarily leaving for a spell in 2018 before heading back north.

He has a wife, a four-year-old daughter and a baby son, born just a couple of months before he was detained, he said, on an old warrant for trespass at the home of his ex-wife’s mother.

Ambrocio, 35, who’d worked in construction in Montgomery, Alabama, seemed almost stunned to be back in Guatemala.

He was also angry, not comprehending why he was deported when most of the rhetoric from Trump and his team has been about sending violent offenders out of the country.

“We’re not criminals,” he insisted, saying he did not consider his offence to be a serious crime.

“If I can never go back, I will try to get my wife and kids here,” he conceded. “That will be very challenging.”

The head of the World Food Programme in Afghanistan says the agency can only feed half the millions of Afghans in need after cuts in international aid and an impending freeze in US foreign funding.

Many people were living on just “bread and tea,” WFP Country Director Hsiao-Wei Lee told Reuters.

Afghanistan was tipped to the brink of economic crisis in 2021 as the Taliban took over and all development and security assistance to the country was frozen, with restrictions also placed on the banking sector.

Since then humanitarian aid – aimed at funding urgent needs through non-profit organizations and bypassing government control – has filled some of the gap. But donors have been cutting steadily in recent years, concerned by Taliban restrictions on women, including their order that Afghan female NGO employees stop work, and competing global crises.

Lee told Reuters shortly before finishing her three-year term in Afghanistan that funding cuts had meant that roughly half the 15 million Afghans in acute need of food were not receiving rations during this year’s harsh winter.

“That’s over 6 million people who are probably eating one or two meals a day and it’s just bread and tea,” she said in an interview on Saturday. “Unfortunately this is what the situation looks like for so many that have been removed from assistance.”

Afghanistan’s humanitarian plan was only just over half funded in 2024, according to United Nations data, and aid officials have flagged fears this could fall further this year.

The US State Department issued a “stop-work” order on Friday for all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to a cable reported by Reuters, after President Donald Trump ordered a pause to review if aid allocation was aligned with his foreign policy.

It was not immediately clear how that would impact Afghanistan’s humanitarian operations, which in 2024 were over 40% funded by the United States, the largest donor.

“I think any potential reduction in assistance for Afghanistan is of course concerning…whether it is assistance to WFP or another actor,” Lee said.

“The levels of need are just so high here in Afghanistan. I certainly hope that any decisions made, any implementation of decisions made take into consideration the needs of the people – the women, the children,” she said.

Western diplomats and humanitarian officials have said aid is dropping to Afghanistan in part due to global emergencies in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza and also because of concerns with Taliban restrictions on women.

Last week, the International Criminal Court prosecutor announced he had applied for arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders, including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of the persecution of women and girls.

Lee said the operating environment had been a “roller coaster” in the last three years, but that WFP was trying to prove to donors concerned about the plethora of restrictions on women that they were still reaching female beneficiaries and their children with aid.

Though the Taliban have said female Afghan NGO workers must stop work, many humanitarian organizations have said they have been granted exemptions, especially in areas like health.

Lee said WFP had adapted and been able to reach women despite funding cuts and official restrictions.

People across China are hailing the success of homegrown tech startup DeepSeek and its founder, after the company’s newest artificial intelligence model sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

“DeepSeek overturns the US stocks overnight” one trending hashtag with tens of millions of views proclaimed on Chinese social media platform Weibo. “DeepSeek makes Meta panic,” said another, in reference to the US tech giant that’s invested heavily in developing its own AI models.

More than a dozen hashtags related to the cutting-edge technology were trending on Weibo early this week as DeepSeek surged to the top of international app store charts, surpassing American company OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Monday.

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng was also hailed as a tech visionary who could help China usher in a culture of innovation to rival that of Silicon Valley.

The engineer-turned-entrepreneur, who rarely gives interviews, is known for hiring only domestic talent and keeping his AI models open source, allowing other companies or users to test and build upon the model.

Liang, a co-founder of AI-oriented hedge fund High-Flyer Quant, founded DeepSeek in 2023. The startup’s newest model DeepSeek R1, unveiled on January 20, can nearly match the capabilities of its far more famous American rivals, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, Meta’s Llama and Google’s Gemini. However, it cost less than $6 million to build, the company claims – a fraction of the investment from those other firms.

Famed tech investor Marc Andreessen hailed the model as a “Sputnik moment” and US President Donald Trump on Monday called the breakthrough a “wake-up call” for America in its rivalry with China. Technological dominance, especially in AI, has become a key battleground between the two powers, with the US in recent years limiting Chinese firms’ access to chips that could power rapid AI development.

Analysts say that more information is needed to verify DeepSeek’s claims about its product’s pricetag and point out that the app operates within the stringent restrictions on speech and information imposed by the Chinese government. That means its AI assistant’s answers to questions on the Tiananmen Square massacre or Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests will mirror Beijing’s line – or a response will be declined altogether.

But for many in China, the success of the technology – and Liang’s vision and ethos for DeepSeek – mark a significant step forward for the country in a competitive international arena.

“No matter how powerful the old guard is, they may be overturned overnight,” read one triumphant comment on Weibo with over a thousand likes.

“(Liang’s) achievements … can be called a national destiny,” another read.

‘Changing the rules of the game’

Born in the 1980s as the son of a primary school teacher, Liang grew up in a small city in China’s southern province of Guangdong. He went on to study information and electronic engineering at Zhejiang University, a prestigious school in China’s eastern tech hub Hangzhou, according to Chinese state media.

Early business associates interviewed by state-linked financial outlet Yicai in recent days remembered the future DeepSeek founder as a bit “nerdy” and recalled “a terrible haircut” he sported in the past.

Liang talked about his idea of training large AI models and “changing the rules of the game,” but no one took him seriously, the outlet reported, without naming the early associates. Such feats were typically only deemed possible for China’s tech giants like ByteDance or Alibaba, it said.

Liang co-founded his AI-oriented hedge fund High-Flyer Quant in 2015, less than decade after he finished his undergraduate studies, according to state media reports. The fund incorporates AI machine learning models into its operations, according to the company’s website.

At the same time, the firm was amassing computing power into a basketball court–sized AI supercomputer, becoming among the top companies in China in terms of processing capabilities – and the only one that was not a major tech giant, according to state-linked outlet The Paper.

In 2023, Liang founded DeepSeek, with a focus on advancing the field of general artificial intelligence – and, apparently, revamping China’s culture around innovation.

“We often say there’s a one or two-year gap between China and the US, but the real gap is between originality and imitation. If this doesn’t change, China will always be a follower,” Liang said in a rare media interview with the finance and tech-focused Chinese media outlet 36Kr last July.

The rise of DeepSeek roughly coincides with the wind-down of a heavy-handed state crackdown on the country’s tech giants by authorities seeking to re-assert control over a cohort of innovative private firms that had grown too powerful in the government’s eyes.

But Beijing has also placed tremendous emphasis on cultivating technological prowess, with Chinese leaders vowing over the past year to boost self-reliance and strength in technology – especially in the face of mounting tech competition with the United States.

Liang appeared to reference difficulties posed by US tech export controls – saying in the 36Kr interview last year that his company’s challenges have not been about money, but the embargo on “high-end chips.”

But he also expressed optimism about China’s ability to compete in the future.

“When society allows hardcore innovators to succeed, collective thinking will change. We just need more concrete examples and processes,” Liang told the outlet.

‘We don’t do mediocre’

The company, which has teams in Beijing and Hangzhou, has remained small, with just under 140 researchers and engineers, according to state media – a far cry from the large firms both in China and the US that have led the creation of AI models.

DeepSeek’s employees have been recruited domestically, Liang said in the same interview last year, describing his team as fresh graduates and doctorate students from top Chinese universities.

“The top 50 talents may not be in China, but maybe we can create such people ourselves,” he told 36Kr, noting that the work is divided “naturally” by who has what strengths. “Innovation first requires confidence. This confidence is usually more obvious in young people,” he added.

Zihan Wang, a former DeepSeek employee now studying in the US, told MIT Technology Review in an interview published this month that the company offered “a luxury that few fresh graduates would get at any company” – access to abundant computing resources and the freedom to experiment.

The whole team shared a “collaborative culture” around research, Wang said.

Active recruitment ads on the DeepSeek website and major job seeking sites show the company hiring deep learning researchers, engineers, and user interface designers.

Among them, the highest paid engineers’ positions are listed with a monthly salary range of up to 90,000 yuan ($12,400). By comparison, the higher end of the base pay for a Google software engineer is upwards of $29,000, according to tech industry salary insight platform levels.fyi.

A post on DeepSeek’s official Wechat social media account declares that the company’s devotion is to “exploring the essence of AGI” or artificial general intelligence. “We don’t do mediocre things and answer the biggest questions with curiosity and a far-reaching vision,” the post added.