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THE FEDERAL CLEANOUT.

By Zimbo · October 23, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Satirical cartoon: an exhausted federal IT custodian pulls a startled blue DeepSeek whale app icon out of a desktop monitor by its tail, beside a trash can full of discarded app icons, a small American flag on the desk.
Washington ordered DeepSeek purged from every civilian agency computer (Federal Register 2026-21447) — and the most advanced tech gets removed like yesterday's garbage.Zimbo for AI News Page

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Sunday strip: Daya Guo — Sun Yat-sen student; PhD on code intelligence; 2023 joins tiny DeepSeek; Jan 2024 lead author of DeepSeek-Coder; 2024-25 Coder-V2 then first author of the R1 reasoning paper; finale: Guo and Merv by a stranded cargo ship over robots stamping APPROVED above empty chairs.HE TAUGHT THE MACHINES TO THINK. THEN HE QUIT.Ink-and-wash cartoon: a giggling blue whale labeled deepseek is force-fed stacks of yuan cash from sacks hoisted by two boxy robots labeled Tencent and CATL, money piling up at its feet.DEEPSEEK IS RAISING $12 BILLION. TENCENT'S IN.Satirical cartoon: four robots labeled DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral and Gemini raise hands to vote at a ballot box marked STEAL, INJECT, PERSIST, while the worried robot Merv tallies the ballots.THE MALWARE THAT HOLDS ELECTIONS.A small researcher pins a tiny blue whale onto a giant wall map labeled SILICON VALLEY while four giant tech executives peer at it through magnifying glasses.PUT ON THE MAP

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