The Department of Homeland Security has ordered artificial intelligence technology from Chinese company DeepSeek Ltd. should be removed from all civilian federal agencies.
The order, posted today on the Federal Register website, warned that DeepSeek’s AI models represent “multiple threat vectors” that could give the Chinese Communist Party “broad powers” to access American government infrastructure.
DeepSeek didn’t even make the top 10 of a recent government survey of people expressing their opinions on AI models, but in 2025 the free app was downloaded by millions of Americans, to the consternation of the US government. At the time, an outright ban on the app was being considered in the US, and one cybersecurity expert called DeepSeek’s privacy policy “not worth the paper it’s written on.”
DHS’s new order means that all civilian government information technology systems must now remove all DeepSeek-related products from their systems, including third-party services developed with the app. In the future, purchasing DeepSeek products and services from these agencies is prohibited. DHS justified the move by citing the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 following a review of the matter by the Federal Acquisition Security Council.
The DHS then warned that the technology posed a threat to the United States in various forms. The agency explained that it could be used to “track or digitally fingerprint” users and could “transfer sensitive data to the People’s Republic of China if used by the U.S. government or vendors.”
The U.S. crackdown on DeepSeek had been brewing since last year, when the company stunned the tech industry with the release of its R1 model. Despite being trained on less powerful chips and at a fraction of the cost of some competing models, the open source AI system outperformed models developed by American rivals OpenAI and Anthropic in several complex tests.
The Commerce Department banned DeepSeek from government devices last year, while the U.S. Navy ordered all of its members not to use the model because of possible security concerns. New York State banned DeepSeek from government devices and networks due to “serious concerns” about potential privacy and censorship risks posed by the app.
DeepSeek recently released its latest AI model, V4.1 Flash-1017. The updated model promised faster performance and improved reasoning and coding capabilities. Early reports suggested it could compete with some of America’s most advanced AI systems.
Photo: Unsplash
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