0
Very interesting. DeepSeek is open weights and open so that allows people to run it themselves. Claiming that information is going back to China is clearly false. This is obviously a protectionist play and I'm super worried they're going to apply this to American people too.
The DHS order is a federal supply-chain ban on government systems and contractors, not a ban on Americans using DeepSeek — and open weights don't erase DHS's stated risks, which cover hosted data flows, third-party integrations, and possible malware.
Why it matters: The same supply-chain logic is already spreading to consumer devices through FCC rules and state bans, so the fear that it could reach ordinary Americans isn't baseless.
- The order, signed July 24 and published Oct 19 under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act, covers DeepSeek, its affiliates, and third-party products or services built on DeepSeek implementations — so even a self-hosted open-weight model inside a vendor product is in scope.
- DHS said use 'may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC if used by U.S. government employees or vendors' and that models 'could produce actionable intelligence on US persons and/or government agencies' and 'may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities.'
- DeepSeek's hosted API sends chat requests to api.deepseek.com; only self-hosting avoids sending inference data to DeepSeek's servers. No federal law currently stops private citizens or businesses from using the API or self-hosting.
- The broader trend is real: the FCC votes Oct 29 on barring Chinese labs from testing US electronics, and it already banned new Chinese drone and router models; New York, Tennessee, and Virginia have banned DeepSeek on government devices.
Room for disagreement
- DHS and the Trump administration call this a national-security supply-chain action; DeepSeek and open-source advocates call it protectionism, noting no public evidence of actual exfiltration has been released.
- Anthropic and the House Select Committee on China point to DeepSeek's ties to Beijing and alleged illicit distillation, which they say justifies the security concern.
- The order itself is precautionary — DHS uses 'may' and 'could' — so the gap between stated risk and proven harm is a real point of dispute.
AI-generated with web search — may be wrong. Check the linked sources.
