US and APAC allies move to ban DeepSeek from government devicesUS and APAC allies move to ban DeepSeek from government devices

A couple of US lawmakers have introduced the cryptically named “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act”. Reading between the lines, our best guess is that they want to ban the installation of popular Chinese AI app DeepSeek on all devices used by the US government. They presumably chose the name in a bid to grab President Trump’s incredibly divided attention and will be hoping he graces them with one of his performative signing ceremonies ASAP.

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans,” said co-sponsor Josh Gottheimer. “Now, we have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens.

“This is a five alarm national security fire. We must get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities. We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security. That’s why I’m introducing this common sense bipartisan legislation with my colleague, Congressman LaHood, to immediately ban DeepSeek from all U.S. government devices. We’ve seen China’s playbook before with TikTok, and we cannot allow it to happen again.”

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not one the United States can afford to lose,” added LaHood, saying the quiet part out loud. “DeepSeek’s generative AI program acquires the data of U.S. users and stores the information for unidentified use by the CCP… It is critical that Congress safeguard Americans’ data and continue to ensure American leadership in AI.”

Not only is the claimed CCP use unspecified, no evidence is presented to support the assertion that DeepSeek operates at the behest of the CCP other than the blanket assumption that all Chinese (and, apparently, Singaporean) companies are just pawns in Xi Jinping’s dastardly great game. The underlying reason for US hostility such as this is helpfully spelt out by LaHood.

Maybe they’re thinking of this story, in which a researcher reckons he’s found some DeepSeek code that ‘could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company’. That company is China Mobile, which has an extensive international presence. The claim seems somewhat speculative but still worthy of further investigation.

But if we take the national security/data protection angle at face value, why are any Chinese-owned apps allowed on any devices owned by Americans? Newsweek recently reported that ‘China Is Dominating the US App Stores’, so this piecemeal banning of whichever apps happen to be in the news is almost certainly futile. If anything made in China is a potential backdoor for the CCP then surely all of it should be banned.

Nonetheless, some of America’s US allies have already got the memo and are acting even more quickly. According to a Light Reading report South Korea, Australia, Taiwan and India have all blocked DeepSeek from government devices due to security concerns. Presumably they all allow other Chinese apps too.

Of course, China has to take its fair share of the blame for this global paranoia. The country does have a strong track record of various types of espionage and dodgy behaviour and, while everyone else is at it too, China seems to take it to another level. That, combined with China’s own tendency to marginalise or ban foreign companies itself, gives the rest of the world all the pretext it needs to return the favour. China is paying the price for trying to be too cute by half on the global stage, but everyone is impoverished by the continued escalation of mutual hostilities.