US Lawmakers Already Pushing A Bill To Ban DeepSeek From Government Devices

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

Over the past few weeks, a new generative AI chatbot has ascended to a stunning level of popularity, seemingly out of nowhere: DeepSeek. This Chinese-made system offered the same level of performance one would get from a system like OpenAI’s ChatGPT but for a fraction of the price.

Unfortunately, it was quickly discovered that DeepSeek has some concerning data collection policies. User data connected to the service is sent to a Chinese company with direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that had previously been banned from operating in the US.

Now, per The Wall Street Journal, a pair of United States lawmakers — Darin LaHood, an Illinois Republican, and Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat — are introducing a bill that would ban DeepSeek from being used on government devices. Use of the app is already banned at an independent level within several government programs, including NASA and the US Navy. The state of Texas has also already instituted its own ban on the app on government devices. This bill, though, would push a sweeping ban on the app across all federal government devices.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because this is how the current state of TikTok in the US started — it’s just happening faster. TikTok was around and insanely popular for years in the US before government officials became concerned about its supposed ties to the Chinese government. Eventually, a bill was passed that banned its use on government devices. Later on, the government passed the current order that TikTok would be banned across the entire country if ByteDance didn’t sell it off to a US-based firm.

It would appear that US officials have seen what happened with TikTok and are now speed-running that play for DeepSeek.

Unlike TikTok, though, there has been solid proof that user data within DeepSeek is transmitted to China, and the company that collects it is connected to the Chinese government. With TikTok, there is anecdotal evidence that ByteDance shares data with the CCP but no ironclad proof. ByteDance also uses non-Chinese servers to host US-based users’ data. In other words, the case against DeepSeek is much more cut-and-dry than the case against TikTok.

This DeepSeek bill is expected to be formally introduced on Thursday. It will be interesting to see how quickly it moves.

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