The bill, written by Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), is being driven by the type of national security concerns that led Congress to ban China-owned TikTok last year, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Feb. 6).
“This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government,” Gottheimer said.
DeepSeek, also based in China, rocked the artificial intelligence (AI) world last month with the release of an AI model it said can perform as well as its U.S.-built counterparts at a fraction of the cost.
As the WSJ notes, its chatbot is now the most downloaded app in America. And because it is an open-source model, it has been widely embraced by consumers, businesses and developers.
However, the app has intentionally hidden code that could transmit user login information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company barred from operating in the U.S., according to an analysis by Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of data protection/cybersecurity company Feroot Security.
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“Our personal information is being sent to China, there is no denial, and the DeepSeek tool is collecting everything that American users connect to it,” Tsarynny told the WSJ.
His analysis drove LaHood and Gottheimer to draft their bill, set to be introduced Thursday. The lawmakers are the top Republican and Democrat on a subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, the report added.
“Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP company to obtain sensitive government or personal data,” said LaHood, in reference to the Chinese Communist Party.
Other countries have already banned DeepSeek on government devices, including Australia, Italy and Taiwan. The company is also under investigation in France, South Korea, Ireland and Belgium. Texas introduced a ban on use of the chatbot on government devices late last month.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about what the rise of DeepSeek could mean in the B2B space, noting that smaller, more specialized AI models could gain ground in B2B applications, even if they aren’t challenging companies like Google or OpenAI.
“For most business users, having the absolute best model is less important than having one that’s reliable and good enough,” that report said. “Not every driver needs a Ferrari.”
