Two members of the US Congress are planning to introduce a bipartisan bill to ban the use of the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek on government devices. The announcement of the bill comes after a security expert claimed that DeepSeek not only poses a threat to the US artificial intelligence stockpile, but also threatens national security. Recently, the chatbot became the most downloaded app in the US.
U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Darin LaHood (R-IL), the most senior members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence from each party, are planning to introduce the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act. If this all sounds familiar, the move echoes Congress’ blocking of TikTok on government devices in 2022. That was the first salvo in a saga that culminated in the nationwide ban of the app it is now eyeing.
The alert came after an independent analysis by Feroot Security, which claims that DeepSeek’s code sends user data directly to China’s state-owned China Mobile. “We see direct connections to servers and companies in China that are under the control of the Chinese government,” Feroot analyst Ivan Tsarynny told ABC News. “This is something we’ve never seen before.”
“Our personal information is being sent to China, there is no denying it, and the DeepSeek tool is collecting everything that American users connect to it,” Tsarinsky told the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, ABC reported that several cybersecurity experts confirmed Ferut’s findings.
The U.S. Navy and NASA have already banned DeepSeek from their employees’ devices. Texas is the only state that has blocked the app on government devices. Three other countries have already outpaced the US by banning the app: Italy, South Korea, and Australia.
LaHood warned about the dangers of the app. “The national security threat posed to the United States by CCP’s DeepSeek is alarming,” the representative wrote in a press release. “DeepSeek’s generative artificial intelligence program collects data from U.S. users and stores the information for CCP’s unidentified use. Under no circumstances can we allow CCP to obtain sensitive government or personal data.”
“We need to get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malicious activity,” Gottheimer wrote. “We simply cannot allow a PDA to infiltrate our government officials’ devices and jeopardize our national security.”
