When a Chinese artificial intelligence system called DeepSeek emerged as a significant technological development, it became not one story but two — each told by a different civilization with different stakes in the telling. A team of researchers, analyzing 40 news reports from both American and Chinese mainstream outlets, found that the same technology was being shaped into competing myths: one of national achievement and human progress, the other of geopolitical anxiety and latent threat. The study reminds us that in moments of technological rupture, the narrative is never merely about the te