US lawmakers urge states to ban government use of DeepSeek

On Sunday, March 2, members of the US House Intelligence Committee and the House Committee on US-China Strategic Competition, including Darin LaHood from Illinois, a Republican, and Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey, a Democrat, jointly wrote to the governors of all states in the United States, urging them to immediately ban the use and downloading of the Chinese-developed AI program DeepSeek on government-issued devices.

In their letter, they wrote, “The alarming evidence we have suggests that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may use DeepSeek to steal sensitive data of American citizens.” They urged state governors to “take immediate action to prohibit the downloading and use of DeepSeek on all government-issued devices to safeguard the security and integrity of state government systems.”

They issued a warning that “once DeepSeek is used, users will unknowingly share highly sensitive proprietary information with the CCP, such as contracts, documents, and financial records,” and that this data could become a significant asset for the CCP to threaten US national security, spread harmful misinformation, and collect data on Americans.

The letter also mentioned the ongoing concern in the US about companies with ties to the CCP, with the most prominent being Huawei and ByteDance, stating that they pose a direct threat to our national security.

They emphasized that recent studies have shown direct links between DeepSeek’s code and the CCP, allowing it to share user data with China Mobile, a company owned by the Chinese government with close ties to the CCP’s military, already banned in the US by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Furthermore, on February 7, the two congressmen introduced a bipartisan-supported bill called the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” which would prohibit the use and downloading of DeepSeek on any federal government devices. However, given the increasing complexity of cyber threats, securing the operational devices of state governments, especially those used for accessing or storing confidential information to prevent the CCP from obtaining sensitive state, federal, and individual information, must be a priority.

Currently, Virginia, Texas, and New York have issued orders banning the use of DeepSeek on state government devices.

In January of this year, the Chinese software company DeepSeek released an AI model of the same name, claiming its performance is comparable to models developed by American companies such as OpenAI, Meta, and Alphabet, at a fraction of the cost. This announcement has raised alarms among policymakers, Silicon Valley’s major financiers, and technology experts, sparking debate and intensifying the competition between China and the US in various fields.