US DHS bans DeepSeek AI technology across federal civilian agencies
The US Department of Homeland Security ordered federal civilian agencies to remove existing DeepSeek products and halt new purchases, citing supply chain security laws without setting a deadline.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Homeland Security has issued an order banning federal civilian agencies from using artificial intelligence technology from the Chinese lab DeepSeek. The directive requires these agencies to remove existing DeepSeek products from their IT systems and prohibits the purchase of any new ones.
The ban extends beyond DeepSeek's own products to include offerings from affiliated companies and third-party services built with DeepSeek implementations. However, the notice did not set a specific compliance deadline or detail the particular security concerns that led to the decision. It remains unclear what "built with" actually means in practice, leaving questions about whether AI gateways like OpenRouter fall under the restriction.
The order is based on a 2018 US law covering supply chain security in federal procurement. This move follows earlier discussions within the US government about taking steps against powerful Chinese open-weight models, such as Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI. While major tech firms like Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Meta previously objected to broad restrictions, OpenAI and Anthropic had lobbied for tighter controls, marking a shift towards concrete regulatory action against specific foreign AI providers.