DHS Yanks DeepSeek From Civilian Devices: 98% Cheaper Than GPT-5.5, 100% Less Welcome on Federal Hardware 🤖

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday ordered civilian government agencies to remove DeepSeek, the China-built AI chatbot, from their computer systems and to halt any new purchases of the software or third-party services built on top of it. DHS warned that the models present "multiple threat vectors," and that government use "may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC"—the People's Republic of China—and could yield "actionable intelligence on U.S. persons and/or government agencies."

The directive extends beyond DeepSeek's flagship app to any service developed with it. A July DHS memo, made public Monday, had already instructed agencies to monitor web traffic for DeepSeek-related risks. The Commerce Department and the Navy previously restricted DeepSeek on government devices, and New York, Tennessee, and Virginia have taken similar steps. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment.

DeepSeek, founded in Hangzhou, surged into global headlines on Jan. 27, 2025, when its open-source model—built for under $5 million—sent Nvidia's stock down 16%, erasing roughly $600 billion of the chipmaker's market capitalization as U.S. tech shed an estimated $1 trillion in value. Italy's data protection authority days later ordered the company to block its chatbot, citing "totally insufficient" answers to privacy questions. In April 2025, a House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party alleged DeepSeek secretly funnels American user data to Beijing and may have used about 60,000 Nvidia chips, including 20,000 restricted under U.S. export controls.

The Hangzhou startup has continued releasing models: a V4-Pro preview launched in April at roughly 98% below OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Pro, free to download and modify under an MIT license, followed this week by an updated V4.1-Flash aimed at efficiency. DHS's order arrives as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to vote on October 29 on barring all Chinese labs from testing electronics for U.S. use, widening a federal campaign against Chinese-origin technology across civilian networks.