The US federal government's DeepSeek ban extends to third-party products

The US Department of Homeland Security issued Removal Order No. 2026-01, prohibiting about 430 federal civilian agencies from procuring DeepSeek products and requiring the removal of third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek; models distilled or fine-tuned from R1 and V3 are likewise restricted. The order was signed on July 24 under the 2018 Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act, and the Federal Register notice was published on October 19 under docket DHS-2026-0628; national security systems overseen by the Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence are outside its scope. DHS warned that content entered into DeepSeek may transmit sensitive data to China, and mentioned security flaws researchers found in its iPhone app; even if a product contains no original DeepSeek weights, existing AI tracking systems track only the models running within a product, not the development source. CISA had stopped accepting exception requests 28 days before the order was made public, and agencies' 60-day application deadline expired on September 22, earlier than the Federal Register publication date.