The order says to uninstall, stop usage of online products and monitor traffic from DeepSeek at all «Federal civilian agency systems» except the Pentagon and the Director of National Intelligence.
The models are produced from and located in The Peoples Republic of China, that permits «extensive authority to government» to «access private company infrastructure,» the DHS says — in a not-so-subtle hint this might apply to other Chinese models as well.
They further say that DeepSeek collects «personally identifiable information» and that its use might result in «the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC.» This might in turn produce «actionable intelligence» on persons, data or programs belonging to the government.
The order also says DeepSeek models could contain malware or vulnerabilities, and goes on to claim that their iOS app contains «multiple critical vulnerabilities.»
The ban has been quietly in effect since July and the reason for publishing it today is unknown, although it comes after the Trump-Xi summit in September, and DeepSeek has been enjoying some buzz lately for the freshly released DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 that performs on par with GPT-5.6-Sol at a much lower cost.
Several individual agencies and states have enacted similar bans on DeepSeek, Reuters writes, Gizmodo says they have been accused of stealing from American AI models, and The BBC notes that Trump has made no secret that China is America’s chief US rival on Artificial Intelligence.
Read more: The DHS Memo. More on Reuters, Gizmodo The BBC and Politico.