Trump bans all US govt agencies from using DeepSeek
President Trump’s administration has announced a ban on civilian US government agencies using products or services from Chinese AI startup firm DeepSeek. According to those in the loop, the move to bar DeepSeek is due to it presenting ‘multiple threat vectors’ as their servers are local in China.
The notice came directly from the US Department of Homeland Security, and was signed off by James H. Percival II, the Department of Homeland Security General Counsel. The ban will cover not just DeepSeek products itself, but also third-party products and services that were developed using DeepSeek implementations. The notice itself was sent out in July, and was made public this week.
According to the notice, the US government is afraid that DeepSeek may collect personally identifiable information, may track and digitally fingerprint users, or may also hand over sensitive data to the Chinese government if used by US government employees or vendors. That may then lead to the Chinese government getting actionable intelligence on US citizens and/or the government. The notice also cites fears of malware and other security vulnerabilities.
DeepSeek, for those not familiar, is a Chinese AI company that was founded back in July 2023, but took the world by storm last year when it launched the DeepSeek R1 model. It managed to either match or came close to the performance of proprietary models from American companies, while being not just more efficient but also open source.
Unsurprisingly, China isn’t keen on this move, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson stating that China will continue to object to the overextension of national security concerns and the politicisation of technology and trade. The ban on DeepSeek is just the latest from the Trump administration attempting to crack down on Chinese tech firms, having previously banned Chinese drones, routers and other key hardware components.
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