Were DeepSeek's Development Costs Much Higher Than Reported?

Nearly three years ago a team of Chinese AI engineers working for DeepSeek's parent company unveiled an earlier AI supercomputer that the Washington Post says was constructed from 10,000 A100 GPUs purchased from Nvidia. Roughly six months later "Washington had banned Nvidia from selling any more A100s to China," the article notes.
Remember that number as you read this. 10,000 A100 GPUs...DeepSeek's new chatbot caused a panic in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street this week, erasing $1 trillion fro