US orders civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek

The order is older than the news. It includes a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dated 26 June, CyberScoop says, while the BBC reports the ban took effect at the end of July. The ban covers civilian departments such as the Treasury, while the Pentagon and its agencies sit outside it. Exceptions are possible, but an agency must file two months in advance and show it cannot do its job without the software.

Mullin’s letter centres on where the data goes. In his account, DeepSeek keeps it on servers in China, whose security laws let the government obtain it from local firms, so anything staff type into the chatbot, and every reply, could reach Beijing. Until the software is gone, he asks agencies to keep a close eye on traffic leaving their networks.

DeepSeek’s open models are popular because they cost little to run. US firms such as OpenRouter build them into their own services, the BBC notes, and the ban also covers technology built with DeepSeek’s models.

For builders selling to US civilian agencies, a clear list of the AI models inside each product now carries weight at contract time.