Lawmakers are now pushing to immediately ban the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek on government devices, citing national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may have built a backdoor into DeepSeek to access Americans’ sensitive private data. If passed, DeepSeek could be banned within 60 days.
DeepSeek shocked the world when it debuted last month. Rumored to rival OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model despite costing significantly less to develop, DeepSeek’s open source model is free to download. That propelled its popularity, making DeepSeek the most-downloaded app in the US.
As DeepSeek was rapidly installed on an increasing number of US phones, research emerged yesterday suggesting that DeepSeek is linked to a Chinese telecom company, China Mobile. In an analysis shared with AP News, Ivan Tsarynny, the CEO of Feroot, revealed that DeepSeek apparently hid code that sends user login information to China Mobile.
China Mobile, lawmakers noted, was “banned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for use in the United States.”
“It’s mindboggling that we are unknowingly allowing China to survey Americans and we’re doing nothing about it,” Tsarynny told AP News.
Tsarynny’s analysis prompted bipartisan legislation announced today from US Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Darin LaHood (R-Ill.). Their bill, the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” will be introduced today to address what they consider an “alarming threat to US national security.”
“We have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of US citizens,” Gottheimer said in the press release. “This is a five alarm national security fire,” he warned, urging a probe to “get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities.”
While the text of the bill is currently unavailable, the release suggested that Americans are already “sharing highly sensitive, proprietary information with DeepSeek—contracts, documents, and financial records.”
“In the wrong hands, this data is an enormous asset to the CCP, a known foreign adversary,” lawmakers warned.
“We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security,” Gottheimer said in the release. Because of the alleged link to China Mobile, he told The Wall Street Journal that passing the law should be a “no-brainer.”
Other countries have banned or partially banned DeepSeek on government devices, including Australia, Italy, South Korea, and Taiwan. Several federal agencies have also quickly moved to restrict federal workers’ DeepSeek use, including the US Navy and NASA. And Texas became the first state to ban DeepSeek on state-issued devices last month, along with several other Chinese apps growing in popularity in the US, like RedNote, which became a popular TikTok alternative when TikTok briefly shut down.
Trump’s Commerce Secretary pick suspicious of DeepSeek
TikTok has been banned on government devices since 2022, and Donald Trump is currently trying to work out a deal to save the app after TikTok was briefly blocked nationwide. As national security fears around TikTok swirl, one Senator, John Curtis (R-Utah), warned yesterday that DeepSeek is “TikTok on steroids” while questioning Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary.
According to Curtis, it’s unlikely that DeepSeek’s development was “done cheaper and better than” models in the US, prompting Lutnick to respond, “Well, it’s easy to be cheaper if you steal it”—seemingly referencing OpenAI claims that DeepSeek used its data improperly.
But while the national security concerns require a solution, Curtis said his priority is maintaining “a really productive relationship with China.” He pushed Lutnick to address how he plans to hold DeepSeek—and the CCP in general—accountable for national security concerns amid ongoing tensions with China.
Lutnick suggested that if he is confirmed (which appears likely), he will pursue a policy of “reciprocity,” where China can “expect to be treated by” the US exactly how China treats the US. Currently, China is treating the US “horribly,” Lutnick said, and his “first step” as Commerce Secretary will be to “repeat endlessly” that more “reciprocity” is expected from China.
But while Lutnick answered Curtis’ questions about DeepSeek somewhat head-on, he did not have time to respond to Curtis’ inquiry about Lutnick’s intentions for the US AI Safety Institute (AISI)—which Lutnick’s department would oversee and which could be essential to the US staying ahead of China in AI development.
Viewing AISI as key to US global leadership in AI, Curtis offered “tools” to help Lutnick give the AISI “new legs” or a “new life” to ensure that the US remains responsibly ahead of China in the AI race. But Curtis ran out of time to press Lutnick for a response.
It remains unclear how AISI’s work might change under Trump, who revoked Joe Biden’s AI safety rules establishing the AISI.
What is clear is that lawmakers are being pressed to preserve and even evolve the AISI.
Yesterday, the chief economist for a nonprofit called the Foundation for the American Innovation, Samuel Hammond, provided written testimony to the US House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, recommending that AISI be “retooled to perform voluntary audits of AI models—both open and closed—to certify their security and reliability” and to keep America at the forefront of AI development.
“With so little separating China and America’s frontier AI capabilities on a technical level, America’s lead in AI is only as strong as our lead in computing infrastructure,” Hammond said. And “as the founding member of a consortium of 280 similar AI institutes internationally, the AISI seal of approval would thus support the export and diffusion of American AI models worldwide.”