US bans DeepSeek AI from government systems: What the official notice says about ‘transfer of sensitive data’ to China

The United States has ordered civilian government agencies to remove DeepSeek AI technology, citing privacy and security risks, including potential data transfers to China. 

The United States has ordered the removal of DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology from most government systems. The ban covers civilian government agencies and technology developed using DeepSeek’s AI models.

The Department of Homeland Security made the order public on 19 October. However, the ban had already taken effect at the end of July, according to the BBC.

It covers the Treasury, State and Justice departments, among other civilian agencies. Agencies under the Department of Defense are excluded from the order.

What does the official notice say?

“DeepSeek's account generation process collects personally identifiable information (PII) and may also track and digitally fingerprint users,” says the official notice.

“DeepSeek's most widely used applications function through a prompt-and-response process that requires presenting information to the model, and which may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC if used by U.S. government employees or vendors," it further says.

“The transfer of the aforementioned information to the PRC, either independently or in combination with publicly available data, could produce actionable intelligence on U.S. persons and/or government programs. The models themselves may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities. Indeed, open-source security research has found that the DeepSeek iOS mobile application contains multiple critical vulnerabilities,” it added.

As an exception, the notice says that executive agencies may request an exception by asking that the order not apply to the agency, certain actions, or for a delay in compliance. The exception request must be “submitted in writing within 60 days of the issuance of this order and include all necessary information for the issuing official to review and evaluate it”, it says.

Sounak Mukhopadhyay