- The US Ministry of Commerce has allegedly been prohibited from using Deepseek on government units
- This follows similar bans from other US public agencies and departments
- A Bipartisan -Bill proposal has been introduced in Congress to ban the model from all US government units
Staff at the US Ministry of Commerce have been banned from using the Chinese AI model on government-issued units.
According to Pakinomist, employees are prohibited from downloading, viewing, accessing applications, desktop apps or sites related to Deepseek.
“To help keep the Department of Commerce Information Systems secure, access to the new Chinese-based AI Deepseek is broadly banned on all GFE,” a mass email told employees about their government-furnished equipment.
Concerns for privacy
The chatbot has also been banned by the US Navy who has asked the staff to avoid using it in “any capacity” due to “potential security and ethical concerns associated with the model’s origin and use”.
Large language models such as Deepseek collect huge amounts of personal information and scrape the Internet to collect huge amounts of data in training the model, which has led states that banned the tool, such as Italy’s data protection authority that blocks the model of privacy and finds the information provided to regulators ‘completely inadequate’.
In February 2025, a Bipartisan Bill was introduced in the US Congress with the aim of “protecting Americans from Deepseek” by banning AI from all government units for federal employees.
“The Chinese Communist Party has made it clear to a large extent that it will utilize any tool available to undermine our national security, spray harmful disinformation and collect data on Americans,” said Congress Member Josh Gotheimer.
“Now we have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using Deepseek to steal the sensitive data from US citizens.
