Overview
- The Department of Homeland Security directed federal civilian agencies on Monday to remove DeepSeek products and third-party services built on its models and to bar new purchases, while allowing agencies to request exceptions with a 60-day written justification.
- DHS said the company’s China-hosted servers may permit Chinese authorities to obtain data, that DeepSeek’s account process collects personally identifiable information and can digitally fingerprint users, and that the models may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities.
- The exclusion applies to civilian executive-branch systems and procurement lists but does not automatically extend to the Department of Defense or the intelligence community, leaving a carve-out for national security systems.
- The order covers not only DeepSeek’s own offerings but also downstream products that incorporate its open-weight models, creating complex detection and removal work for federal IT teams, contractors, and vendors.
- The move follows earlier agency and state restrictions, reflects growing U.S. supply-chain and export controls on advanced AI, and drew an official protest from Beijing ahead of a planned U.S.-China leaders’ meeting next month.