The Department of Homeland Security plans to ban nonmilitary federal agencies from using technology developed by DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, according to a notice posted Monday.
In the bulletin, Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that DeepSeek collects personally identifiable information, which may include fingerprints, and risks transferring sensitive information to China when used by a federal employee. The order was issued under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018, which coordinates supply chain risk management across the federal government.
The order includes an exception for the Department of Defense and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
There has not been any reported mass usage of DeepSeek in the federal government, although there have been some instances of attempted access. That includes one instance of a Department of Agriculture employee last year attempting to access the company’s AI chatbot, according to technology and politics site FedScoop. DeepSeek technology is free to use, while other popular AI agents require paid subscriptions or have daily free-usage limits.
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DHS and other federal agencies already use a plethora of AI tools to support domestic and national security operations, manage data and handle administrative tasks, including answering public questions through the new America.gov AI agent. While there is no exhaustive list of AI tools being used across the government, the Department of Defense has said all employees can access Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Starshield’s Grok for Government.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) introduced legislation last year to ban DeepSeek from federal agency technology, but the bill has since languished.
President Donald Trump has supported using AI in the federal government and has framed the emerging technology as a new frontier for competition with China.
“We’re leading now over China and everyone else, and I want to keep it that way,” Trump said following the launch of America.gov in September.
Last month, reporting from The Associated Press predicted that China is closer than ever from closing the competition gap and surpassing U.S. advancements in AI.
DHS did not immediately respond to The Washington Sun’s request for comment on whether there have been any security breaches related to DeepSeek technology.
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