US Bans Use of DeepSeek AI in Federal Agencies

The Trump administration has banned the use of Chinese artificial intelligence DeepSeek in US federal agencies. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered the removal of the service from civilian agency information systems and halted its procurement.

The ban is broad, covering not only the cloud API but also third-party products built on DeepSeek models.

US authorities fear that confidential data could leak to Chinese intelligence services. The official reason for the decision is a threat to national security and risks to government IT infrastructure.

The restriction even applies to local deployments with open-source model weights running on American hardware, raising questions about the measure's effectiveness.

The move appears to be a geopolitical step amid restrictions on chip exports to China. Beijing has already demanded the lifting of restrictions, accusing Washington of politicizing technology.

Major Chinese tech companies, including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent, have placed orders for Nvidia chips worth more than $35 billion.

• ByteDance
• Alibaba
• Tencent

The directive was signed in July and publicly released on October 19–20. The ban applies exclusively to federal civilian agencies and does not affect all US residents.