House bill would ban DeepSeek on agency workers’ devices; CISA election, disinformation officials placed on administrative leave

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.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency placed several members of its election security group on administrative leave last week, multiple sources familiar with the situation told CyberScoop. According to one source, the moves happened Thursday and Friday of last week and were targeted at employees focused on CISA’s mis-, dis- and malinformation teams. The moves include four employees currently working on or assigned to the team, two more that left the team in the past four years but still hold positions at the Department of Homeland Security, and another two that work on elections misinformation or disinformation at DHS. A second source confirmed that some, but not all members of CISA’s election security team, were placed on leave last week. The extent of the teams impacted by the decree is unclear.

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.