DeepSeek has taken the world by storm over the past few months. And now, The White House has taken notice. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration may be taking steps to restrict the Chinese artificial-intelligence app. This could include banning the chatbot from government devices due to national security concerns.
According to the report, the government is worried about how DeepSeek handles user data. The servers for DeepSeek are located in China, as you might expect for a Chinese company. The Trump Administration also believes that the company has not sufficiently explained how this data is stored and who has access to it.
Currently, the US is looking to bar government employees from installing the app on US government devices – like smartphones and laptops. This is the same thing the government did to TikTok before ultimately attempting to ban it entirely from the US.
The US could move to ban DeepSeek from US app stores
The Journal also notes that another move the government is considering is, banning DeepSeek from US app stores (Apple App Store and Google Play Store), and putting limits on how US-based cloud service providers are able to offer DeepSeek AI models to customers. The report also notes that these talks are in the early stages, so things could change and quickly.
The US would not be the first government to limit the access to DeepSeek, as the app has already been removed from Italian app stores, while South Korea suspended new downloads of the app. This came after the company was unable to address regulators’ concerns about its privacy policy. Australia, Canada and Taiwan have also banned the use of DeepSeek on government devices.
Here in the US, some major cloud vendors have been providing DeepSeek’s AI models as part of their services to customers. Restricting this access could affect some pretty major cloud providers.
