US Orders Civilian Agencies to Rip DeepSeek Out of Government Systems

What it is

A DHS notice directs US civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products from their IT systems and stop buying them. It also covers any outside service built on DeepSeek models. DHS describes "multiple threat vectors" and says use "may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC" if government employees or vendors use the models. It adds that use could produce "actionable intelligence on U.S. persons and/or government agencies."

Preconditions / Affected

The notice binds civilian federal agencies. Vendors and contractors fall in scope through the third-party clause, since a vendor product built on DeepSeek is covered. Agencies had already received a July DHS memo, made public with the notice, telling them to monitor traffic in and out of government websites for DeepSeek-related risks.

The page gives context that matters for scoping:

• DeepSeek is open source and can run locally or at any provider, not only in China.
• Perplexity runs its own DeepSeek deployment on US servers.
• The developers separately host a version in China for users of Deepseek.com.
• The April 2025 House select committee on the CCP alleged that DeepSeek secretly sends American user data to the Chinese government.

What to do

The page lists no commands or detection queries. The actions it implies for an affected team:

• Inventory direct DeepSeek use.
• Inventory vendor products and APIs that embed or wrap DeepSeek models.
• Stop new purchases.
• Check web traffic logs for DeepSeek-related traffic, following the July DHS memo.

Caveats

The page does not say whether the ban reaches a DeepSeek model run locally on agency-controlled infrastructure. It does not give a removal deadline or name the notice's legal mechanism. The data-transfer risk is DHS's stated assessment, and the Chinese Embassy had not commented. The page says the open-weight V4-Pro preview (April 2026) is MIT-licensed, which means copies and derivatives will keep circulating outside DeepSeek's own hosting.