The recent release of Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek led to a historic rout of US tech stocks. DeepSeek was reportedly developed with a budget of around A$9.6 million, a tiny number compared to the billions that some of its competitors are spending to develop similar generative AI services.
Governments and intelligence agencies are now urging caution around the use of DeepSeek. Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has banned DeepSeek from government devices, saying it posed an “unacceptable level of security risk.”
It said government entities must manage the risk of DeepSeek’s “extensive collection of data,” and “exposure of that data to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government that conflict with Australian law.”
Similarly, South Korea’s spy agency has accused DeepSeek of “excessively” collecting personal data and using all input data to train itself. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) sent an official notice to government agencies over the use of the app. “Unlike other generative AI services, it has been confirmed that chat records are transferable as it includes a function to collect keyboard input patterns that can identify individuals and communicate with Chinese companies’ servers such as volceapplog.com,” the NIS said in a statement.
However, one of the largest markets for DeepSeek, the US, is yet to officially announce restrictions or potential bans on DeepSeek.
But that may soon change as two US congress members proposed a bipartisan bill to block DeepSeek from government devices, citing national security risks.
Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Darin LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, said in the proposed No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act that the Chinese government’s ability to use the app for surveillance and misinformation are reasons to keep it away from federal networks – similar concerns were raised leading up to the TikTok ban.
“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”
Gottheimer and LaHood’s proposed bill refers to a clause in the DeepSeek app’s user agreement that includes the ability to share user data with China Mobile, a Chinese state-owned firm, as evidence that US user data could be accessed by Beijing, reported Nikkei Asia.
However, President Donald Trump is yet to back these calls. He referred to DeepSeek as a “wake-up call” for the American tech industry. “The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company, should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” he said shortly after the app was released last month.
Recently, when asked by the press if he sees DeepSeek as a national security threat, the president replied, “No. AI…will be a lot less expensive than people originally thought. That’s a good thing. I view that as a very good development, not a bad development.”
There is some legislation that proposes a broader ban on any technology being developed by a specific country. A bill proposed by US Republican senator Josh Hawley on January 29 would bar the import of any AI technology from China due to national security concerns.
When Australia’s Home Affairs department announced that it was banning the use of DeepSeek on government devices, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke stressed that the government acts when the country’s intelligence agencies identify a national security risk, but that its approach is “country agnostic.”
