The Department of Homeland Security issued an order removing all artificial intelligence technology from Chinese company DeepSeek from civilian government systems, effective from the end of July. The directive applies to all DeepSeek AI models and any technology developed using them across agencies including the Department of Treasury, Department of State, and Department of Justice. Military agencies within the Department of Defense were excluded from the restriction.
The order follows escalating tensions between the US and China over artificial intelligence development. White House technology official Michael Kratsios characterized alleged copying of American AI models by Chinese firms as “malicious exploitation” in an internal memo earlier this year. President Donald Trump has publicly identified China as the primary rival in AI development, viewing technological advancement in this field as critical to national interests.
DeepSeek has attracted significant attention since its initial release in 2025 as a free, open-source AI model that operates at substantially lower cost than proprietary alternatives from American firms. The company’s servers have experienced outages due to high demand for its services. The model’s app ranks among the most downloaded applications in Apple’s App Store, and its underlying technology has been integrated into offerings from US technology companies including Snowflake, Vercel, and OpenRouter.
American AI firms including Anthropic and OpenAI have publicly alleged that Chinese competitors, including DeepSeek, have duplicated their AI models. Both companies are preparing for public stock market listings in the coming months. DeepSeek’s cost advantages have proven substantial—the company reported spending approximately $6 million to develop its initial model, compared to roughly $100 million spent by OpenAI on its GPT-4 model. A new version of DeepSeek was released recently and has received user praise for performance on common AI tasks such as software coding.
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