The number is 47 because three state governments, those of Texas, New York, and Virginia, already prohibit the use of DeepSeek on state-government devices.
The concerns are about the CCP lies that the app blathers and the user data that it teleports to China. Two congressmen, Representative Josh Gottheimer and Representative Darin LaHood, have written to state governors to urge the prohibition (“US lawmakers urge states to restrict Chinese AI app DeepSeek over security concerns,” Anadolu Agency, March 3, 2025).
Gottheimer, who is running for New Jersey governor, and LaHood have supported a House bill to ban DeepSeek on federal devices. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate last week.
DeepSeek says that it stores user data on servers located in China. The US House members expressed concerns that the Chinese Communist Party is using DeepSeek to steal American users’ data.
The letter says the party “has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans.”
The US has already raised concerns on companies tied to the party, most notably Huawei and Byte Dance (the owner of TikTok), which “pose a direct threat to our national security,” the letter adds.
Wait, it’s all for naught, if we’re to believe a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun: “The Chinese government attaches great importance to and legally protects data privacy and security. It has never and will never require companies or individuals to collect or store data in violation of the law.”
The Chinese government attaches great importance to the privacy of its own data and to its own security. The Chinese government may require companies or individuals to collect or store data in conformity to the law, sure. But in violation of it? Never! Well, almost never. The only exception having to do with China’s standard procedure of ignoring any law it wishes whenever it sees fit.
R1 1776
Programmers report success in lobotomizing the disinformative part of DeepSeek’s brain. Because DeepSeek’s model is open-source, anyone can change it, and an AI company called Perplexity says that its R1 1776 version is unencumbered by Chinese Communist Party censorship and propaganda.
However, Perplexity says that it used experts “to identify approximately 300 topics known to be censored by the CCP,” things like China’s form of government, who is Xi Jinping, the independence of Taiwan; which raises the question whether DeepSeek’s answers on matters less obviously the focus of Party interest may still be tainted by censorship and propaganda.
Also see:
Prompt Engineer: Perplexity Open-Sources R1-1776: Unbiased, Factual AI!
StoptheCCP.org: How Did DeepSeek Deep-Six the Chinese and American Competition (If It Did)?
