NASA, US Navy ban DeepSeek amid growing security concerns

A bipartisan congressional bill is being introduced to ban China's DeepSeek artificial intelligence software from government devices.

U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., are introducing the legislation on national security grounds, saying the company's technology presents an espionage risk.

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not one the United States can afford to lose,” LaHood said in a statement. “The national security threat that DeepSeek — a CCP-affiliated company — poses to the United States is alarming."

He said DeepSeek’s generative AI program can acquire the data of U.S. users and store the information for unidentified use by Chinese authorities.

The chatbot app, however, has intentionally hidden code that could send user login information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company that has been banned from operating in the U.S., according to an analysis by Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot Security, which specializes in data protection and cybersecurity. His analysis was published earlier by The Associated Press.

“Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP company to obtain sensitive government or personal data,” Gottheimer said.