A proposed bill in Congress would prohibit the Chinese AI app on government devices over security concerns
US lawmakers in the House of Representatives have introduced legislation on Thursday aiming to ban the Chinese-developed AI chatbot application, DeepSeek, from all government-owned devices, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
DeepSeek has rapidly ascended to become the most downloaded app in the United States. However, concerns have been raised after analyses by cybersecurity experts have claimed that DeepSeek’s application contains hidden code capable of transmitting user information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company prohibited from operating within the US. The US has accused the Chinese government of being able to access sensitive data through its applications.
Beijing has dismissed the accusation as “ideological discrimination” and politically motivated. China’s foreign ministry has denied the allegations, asserting that the government does not require enterprises or individuals to collect or store data illegally. DeepSeek has not issued a public statement addressing these specific accusations.
”This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government,” Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer stated. His colleague, Republican Representative Darin LaHood, echoed this sentiment, asserting, “Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP [Chinese Communist Party] company to obtain sensitive government or personal data.”
The proposed legislation mirrors previous actions taken against the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, which was banned from government devices in 2022 due to similar concerns regarding data access by Beijing. The Chinese government has consistently dismissed US accusations against TikTok as unfounded and politically motivated.
TikTok has denied posing a national security threat and has taken steps to address US concerns. In 2022, it launched Project Texas to store American user data on US servers and proposed a “kill switch” to allow government shutdown if non-compliant. Facing legislation requiring ByteDance to divest or face a ban, TikTok has sued, arguing the law is unconstitutional. Despite these efforts, its future in the US remains uncertain.
Internationally, several countries have already taken steps to restrict or ban DeepSeek on government systems. Australia, South Korea, and Italy have prohibited the use of the app within their governmental operations, citing data-security concerns. In the United States, the US Navy and NASA have also blocked the application due to privacy and security issues.
Created by the Hangzhou-based startup DeepSeek Inc., the AI assistant bearing the same name launched in January surpassed US-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the top AI assistant on Apple’s App Store. In contrast to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which offers advanced features through a subscription model, DeepSeek-R1 is freely accessible.
Major US tech firms, including Nvidia, saw their market value plummet. DeepSeek’s V3 and R1 models are seen as direct competitors to OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 reasoning models.
DeepSeek’s success has challenged the strategy of the previous US administration to block China from acquiring advanced chips from the US and the Netherlands.
