United States federal and state agencies continue to implement individual bans on DeepSeek, but the national government may soon be taking its first broad action on the app if proposed new legislation passes. A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is calling for a ban from all federal government devices due to connections to the Chinese government, the factor that has caused TikTok all of its trouble in recent years.
DeepSeek is in a substantially weaker position than TikTok, however. While ByteDance has gone to great lengths to make accomodations for the US market, DeepSeek has not only blown off EU regulators in recent weeks but also appears to have code embedded in the app that passes information back to state-owned China Mobile. While a ban from government devices is almost certain to happen eventually, it remains to be seen if this will trigger a broader ban from listing on the app stores.
How far will DeepSeek bans go?
A broad DeepSeek ban across government appears to be a foregone conclusion at this point, starting with the China-based company rebuffing a request by Italy’s Garante for more information about its shipping of data off to China. That led to a national DeepSeek ban there and would seem to have sealed the possibility of even more popping up, but the U.S. lawmakers that filed the new bill noted security research that indicates login credentials and other sensitive information may be flowing back to the Chinese government.
Aside from Italy there are DeepSeek bans already out in Australia, South Korea and Taiwan. The espionage risks are obvious, and if anything it is surprising that more of the U.S. government has not yet followed suit given prior action on other Chinese apps and bold campaigns by Chinese hackers in recent months. U.S. lawmakers have already seen restrictions on use of the app in Congress and will likely approve a total ban from government devices, but the big question is if the Trump administration will pursue a ban from the Google and Apple app stores.
U.S. lawmakers continue to address threats from China-based apps
The proposed DeepSeek ban would follow bans of the app by NASA, the Pentagon and the Navy. The state of Texas has also already banned it from government devices. U.S. lawmakers should have little to no bipartisan conflict over it after seeing the research pointing to data interception by China Mobile, which is state-owned and provides a direct conduit to the Chinese government.
The app appears to contain code that sends user credentials and other information to CMPassport.com, the online registry for China Mobile. It is also using fingerprinting techniques to brand users and track them, though this does not appear to be disclosed anywhere. If U.S. lawmakers pass the ban it would extend to any other apps produced by the hedge fund High-Flyer. The terms of the ban would give federal agencies 60 days to produce standards and guidelines for removing these apps.
