US Bans DeepSeek Across Federal Civilian Agencies

Federal officials fear that the company’s operational ties to China could grant Beijing authorities access to sensitive government data. While the order allows for narrow exceptions, it marks a significant escalation in the ongoing tech competition between Washington and Beijing. This directive broadens the scope of previous constraints established in December 2025, which initially targeted only intelligence and national security systems.

Beijing has dismissed the move as a politicized overreach. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated that China would defend the interests of its enterprises against what it views as the weaponization of trade and security policies. The scrutiny follows a September report in which the U.S. accused DeepSeek and firms such as Alibaba and Moonshot AI of using model distillation to extract proprietary insights from American systems. Major industry players, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have previously alleged that DeepSeek attempted to harvest their model outputs to train its own platforms, fueling a global debate over intellectual property and AI security.