House bill would ban DeepSeek on agency workers’ devices
Federal employees would be banned from using the Chinese artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek on their government-issued devices under new legislation from a bipartisan group of House lawmakers.
The No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act, introduced by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and 16 of their House colleagues Friday, comes after weeks of panic in Silicon Valley following the revelation that the Chinese startup’s AI models were comparable if not more advanced than offerings from U.S. companies.
DeepSeek, a low-cost, open-source AI model, has since reported difficulties in registering new users thanks to “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services. Meanwhile, a security issue at the company has exposed sensitive internal data, researchers at Wiz found.
Gottheimer, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a press release that there is “deeply disturbing evidence” that China is “using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens.”
“This is a five-alarm national security fire,” he continued. “We must get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities. We simply can’t risk [China] infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”
Gottheimer connected the rise of DeepSeek to TikTok’s proliferation in U.S. markets, saying that the country “cannot allow it to happen again.” LaHood, also a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, raised additional concerns about government workers’ data ending up in the wrong hands.
“DeepSeek’s generative AI program acquires the data of U.S. users and stores the information for unidentified use by” China, LaHood said. “Under no circumstances can we allow a [Chinese] company to obtain sensitive government or personal data.”
According to Axios, DeepSeek has already been banned on Senate devices. And in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday banned DeepSeek from state government devices.
The concern over DeepSeek from U.S. lawmakers follows warnings from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies about Chinese hacking operations that have been ongoing for years, including pre-positioning in critical infrastructure networks.
