- Lawmakers want to ban the Chinese AI app DeepSeek from government devices because they fear it could collect user data that could jeopardize national security. The move comes after a report found DeepSeek had ties to a Chinese state-backed telecommunications company that is banned from doing business in the U.S.
Two members of Congress intend to introduce a bipartisan bill to ban the Chinese AI software DeepSeek from government devices.
The legislation, written by Representatives Darrin LaHood (R-Ill.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), would not allow the app to be downloaded on any electronic devices owned by the government. The bill would be the first of its kind at the federal level meant to address DeepSeek specifically. Congress passed a similar federal ban on having TikTok on government devices, while Texas became the first state government to ban DeepSeek.
LaHood and Gottheiemer are both heavily involved in national security and intelligence policymaking as the chair and ranking member of the National Security Agency and Cyber Subcommittee.
DeepSeek is a popular AI chatbot from China that gained a huge amount of attention after it claimed to have developed a more powerful system than the ones made by U.S. developers for just a fraction of the cost. The fact that DeepSeek comes from China made lawmakers wary, much as they had been about TikTok.
“This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government,” Gottheimer told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the bill.
The concerns stem from the fact that DeepSeek may have ties to state-backed Chinese companies. Those companies, in turn, are subject to the direction of the Chinese government, which could theoretically overrule any user privacy guardrails they implement. If that were to happen, the Chinese government could gain access to sensitive information found on government devices.
DeepSeek roiled the U.S. tech scene last month after it released its latest version. The prospect that a foreign company had developed an AI system just as powerful as major U.S. players like ChatGPT or Google Gemini in a much cheaper way seemed to upend most of the assumptions of the industry—so much so that tech stocks dropped precipitously on the news, though they have mostly recovered.
Further examination of DeepSeek’s models, some of which are open-source, found its training methods may have cost more than they appeared at first. More scrutiny of DeepSeek found it had ties to China Mobile, a state-backed company that is banned from doing business in the U.S.
DeepSeek’s website has some hidden code that when unraveled was found to have the capability to send user data directly to China Mobile’s online registry, according to reporting from ABC News.
“DeepSeek’s generative AI program acquires the data of U.S. users and stores the information for unidentified use by the CCP,” LaHood said in a statement. “Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP company to obtain sensitive government or personal data.”
When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Gottheimer directed Fortune to a press release announcing the bill. LaHood’s office did not return a request for comment.
The push for the legislation came after the reports of DeepSeek’s ties to China Mobile. Research from an Ontario-based cybersecurity firm, Feroot Security, scoured DeepSeek’s code and found what seemed to be intentionally concealed code that would send data to a webpage called CMPassport.com, which turns out to be controlled by China Mobile.
“This is a major red flag from a cybersecurity standpoint,” Feroot Security CEO Ivan Tsarynny told CNBC Wednesday.
China Mobile has been banned from operating in the U.S. since 2019. At the time, the Federal Communications Commission barred it from accessing the U.S. over concerns that its data collection practices could cause “irreparable damage” to national security. In 2021, the New York Stock Exchange delisted China Mobile because of its alleged ties to the Chinese military.
