US bans DeepSeek use across civilian government agencies

The US Department of Homeland Security has banned DeepSeek use across civilian government agencies and ordered the technology removed from most government systems. The order also covers technology built with help from the company’s models and has been in effect since the end of July, although it was made public only on Monday. The Department of the Treasury, Department of State and Department of Justice are among the affected agencies; agencies within the Department of Defense are excluded.

The notice did not detail the security concerns. The measure comes amid continuing US-China technology tensions and targets an open-source, free and relatively inexpensive tool also used by US companies including Snowflake, Vercel and OpenRouter. DeepSeek’s popularity has grown since its public release in 2025, while Anthropic and OpenAI have claimed that Chinese AI firms, including DeepSeek, essentially copied their models.