DHS Bans DeepSeek AI Across US Federal Civilian Agencies and Government Contracts

The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a sweeping restriction ordering the removal of DeepSeek across all federal civilian agencies and their IT systems. In a notice published in the Federal Register, DHS barred DeepSeek from participating in any federal government contracts and directed civilian bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission to exclude and remove all existing DeepSeek products. DHS stated that using the Chinese AI firm's tools could result in the "transfer of sensitive data" from US government employees and vendors to the Chinese government, adding that DeepSeek's models could "contain malware or other security vulnerabilities." The federal ban arrives just days after the company released its V4.1-Flash-1017 model and follows a bill proposed by two US lawmakers in 2025 to ban DeepSeek's chatbot from government devices as its lower-cost models increasingly rival ChatGPT and Gemini.