The US Department of Homeland Security has banned federal civilian agencies from using AI technology from Chinese lab Deepseek. Agencies have to remove existing Deepseek products from their IT systems and can't buy new ones, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The order also covers products from affiliated companies and third-party services built with Deepseek implementations. The department didn't set a deadline or name any specific security concerns. It's still unclear what "built with" actually means and whether AI gateways like OpenRouter fall under the ban.
The order is based on a 2018 US law covering supply chain security in federal procurement. The notice doesn't say which security concerns led to the decision or when agencies need to have the technology removed.
Over the summer, the US government considered steps against Chinese open-weight models, according to the New York Times. The options included sanctions, a trade blacklist, and rules on which models federal agencies are allowed to use.
The push came after a wave of powerful Chinese models such as Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI. The government pulled back for now after Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Meta objected, while OpenAI and Anthropic had lobbied for restrictions.
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