The US Department of Homeland Security has issued an order banning federal civilian agencies from using AI technology developed by the Chinese laboratory Deepseek. Agencies must remove existing Deepseek products from their IT systems and are prohibited from purchasing new ones. The directive extends to affiliated companies and third-party services built with Deepseek implementations. The department did not set a deadline or name specific security concerns. It remains unclear what the phrase built with actually means and whether AI gateways like OpenRouter fall under the ban.
The move relies on a 2018 law covering supply chain security in federal procurement. The notice does not state 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. 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.
