U.S. bans federal civilian agencies from using DeepSeek technology

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has prohibited federal civilian agencies from using DeepSeek's AI technology; existing DeepSeek products must be removed from IT systems, and new products may not be procured. According to The Wall Street Journal, the order also covers products of affiliated companies and third-party services built on DeepSeek implementations, but it sets no removal deadline and does not specify particular security concerns; the exact scope of "built with" and whether AI gateways such as OpenRouter are subject to it remain unclear. The order is based on a 2018 law concerning federal procurement supply chain security. Previously, the U.S. government had considered measures such as sanctions and trade blacklists against Chinese open-weight models, which were put on hold after opposition from Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and Meta, while OpenAI and Anthropic had lobbied for restrictions.