US Orders DeepSeek Removal From Federal Civilian Systems Over National Security Concerns

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered federal civilian agencies to stop procuring products and services from Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek and to remove it from government information technology systems.

The order applies to civilian executive branch agencies, except their national security systems, and does not restrict the general public from using DeepSeek

"Third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations," DHS noted in its order. Agencies must exclude DeepSeek from procurement immediately, it added.

DHS notice alleged, "DeepSeek's models present multiple threat vectors." It noted that DeepSeek's servers were located in China, whose legal system "permits extensive authority to government cyber and intelligence functions to access private company infrastructure." 

It claimed that DeepSeek's account registration collects personally identifiable information and "may also track and digitally fingerprint users," and warned that the transfer of such data "could produce actionable intelligence on US persons and/or government programmes." 

DHS, in its order, added that the models "may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities," citing security research that found multiple critical vulnerabilities in DeepSeek's iOS application.

DeepSeek mostly functions “through a prompt-and-response process that requires presenting information to the model, and which may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC if used by US government employees or vendors,” DHS noted in its order. 

The agency feared that this could result in the information being transferred to the PRC, ”either independently or in combination with publicly available data,” possibly producing “actionable intelligence on US persons and/or government programs.”

Beijing responded, saying China "consistently opposes overstretching the concept of national security and politicising tech and trade issues," and adding, "We will resolutely safeguard Chinese businesses' lawful rights and interests."

China’s Ministry of Commerce further expressed that it "will closely follow the developments and take all necessary measures" to safeguard Chinese tech businesses' legitimate rights and interests.

It said Chinese AI companies abide by the laws of the countries where they operate, pointing to China's Cybersecurity Law and Personal Information Protection Law.