- New probe to Deepseek has been requested by a group of US Senators
- Senators cite national security concerns about the Chinese company
- Many US government departments have already banned the chatbot
The ongoing conflict between China Tech companies and the US government continues after a group of seven Republican Senators asked the Department of Commerce to evaluate data security risks that models from Chinese companies make up specifically AI Chatbot Deepseek.
Chinese technology companies are facing enormous barriers to entering the US market due to tension between the two countries, but Deepseek’s revolutionary open source model has sent waves through the AI landscape thanks to the speed and low development costs.
However, security concerns have been raised, causing more US government departments to ban the use of the model, with a study that even claims that Deepseek is 11 times more dangerous than competitor AI chatbots.
Secrets in danger
The Senators, John Justed, Tedd Budd, John Cornyn, Marsha Blackburn, Bill Cassidy, John Curtis and Todd Young all signed a letter outlined the need to prioritize home-grown AI models, as well as the ‘deeply troubled accusations’, which deeper’s sensitive information back to the Chinese government.
“Deepseeks R1’s model release at the end of January demonstrated the suitability of People’s Republic of China (PRC) national AI talent and the progress their home-waxed models have made in relation to leading US products,” the letter explains.
“The Trump administration has rightly emphasized winning the AI competition against China, and the development of AI use applications for businesses and consumers is an important facet of this competition. To ensure that such applications are safe and not prone to leaking secure information and vicious exploitation is overly paramount.”
The Chinese government has always denied such claims, and all other accusations of cyber espionage, and repeated that the state has no direct ties to Chinese tech companies operating abroad.
