US lawmakers introduce bill to ban use of DeepSeek AI bot on government devices

The bill was introduced by U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Darin LaHood.

Gottheimer and LaHood are members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and served as the Ranking Member and Chair of the National Security Agency and Cyber Subcommittee in the 118th Congress, respectively.

"New research has revealed that DeepSeek’s code is directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the capability to share user data with China Mobile. China Mobile, owned by the Chinese government and with close ties to the Chinese military, has been banned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for use in the United States," Josh Gottheimer said in a statement.

The statement said Americans are sharing highly sensitive, proprietary information with DeepSeek — contracts, documents, and financial records.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity firm Feroot Security has revealed that DeepSeek's artificial intelligence model contains hidden code capable of transmitting user data to China Mobile’s online registry, CMPassport.com.

This revelation raises significant privacy and national security concerns, particularly as China Mobile is a state-controlled telecom company previously delisted from the New York Stock Exchange due to security risks, the cybersecurity firm said in a statement.

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans. Now, we have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens. This is a five alarm national security fire,” said Congressman Josh Gottheimer.

“We must get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities. We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security. That’s why I’m introducing this common sense bipartisan legislation with my colleague, Congressman LaHood, to immediately ban DeepSeek from all U.S. government devices. We’ve seen China’s playbook before with TikTok, and we cannot allow it to happen again,"  Josh Gottheimer said.

Congressman Darin LaHood said: “The national security threat that DeepSeek—a CCP-affiliated company—poses to the United States is alarming. DeepSeek’s generative AI program acquires the data of U.S. users and stores the information for unidentified use by the CCP."

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek, with its supposed low cost and higher performance, has intensified competition in the AI paradigm and left the West in a frenzy, prompting American firms to initiate further research in the arena.

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company which is based in Hangzhou.

Its AI-powered Chatbot has emerged as one of the most downloaded free app on Apple since its release in the USA this month.

After Italy questioned its privacy policy, the app was removed from app stores.

Regulators in South Korea, Ireland and France have all begun investigations into how DeepSeek handles user data, which it stores in servers in China, reported BBC.