Lawmakers will introduce bill to ban DeepSeek from U.S. government devices
U.S. congressmen announced they would introduce a bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives proposing a ban on the use of DeepSeek’s chatbot application by federal employees on government devices.
According to the release, introduced by U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., 5th District, and Darin LaHood, R-Ill., 16th District, the bill is being proposed due to national security concerns related to the Chinese government’s ability to use the app for surveillance purposes.
It is alleged that DeepSeek, which is a closed AI model, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the U.S.
Gottheimer said in the release that new research has uncovered that “DeepSeek’s code is directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” which includes the ability to share user data with China Mobile, an organization owned by the Chinese government that has close ties to the Chinese military. It has been banned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for use in the U.S.
“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans,” Gottheimer said in the release.
“Now, we have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens. This is a five alarm national security fire. We must get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities. We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security. That’s why I’m introducing this common sense bipartisan legislation with my colleague, Congressman LaHood, to immediately ban DeepSeek from all U.S. government devices. We’ve seen China’s playbook before with TikTok, and we cannot allow it to happen again.”
The proposed bill comes in the wake of DeepSeek’s publishing of an AI model late last year that could potentially compete with American AI companies OpenAI, Meta and Alphabet, according to Associated Press.
DeepSeek is currently the most downloaded app in the U.S.
THE LARGER TREND
In January, President Donald Trump announced the formation of Project Stargate, an at least $500 billion investment to build the physical and virtual infrastructure to power AI construction, including “colossal data centers” and campuses nationwide in America.
One of the project’s goals is to improve health outcomes. The Stargate project includes three partners: Oracle’s chief technology officer Larry Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.
Altman said during a press conference that he was thrilled to be part of Project Stargate and anticipates diseases will be cured at an unprecedented rate.
“We will be amazed at how quickly we are curing this cancer and that one and heart disease and what this will do for the ability to deliver very high-quality healthcare, the costs, but really to cure the diseases at a rapid rate I think will be among the most important things this technology does,” Altman said.
