Borrowing a page from Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s anti-CCP playbook, lawmakers in DC have introduced legislation to keep the DeepSeek app out of government devices because of “security concerns that the app could provide user information to the Chinese government” (The Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2025).
DeepSeek, a disruptive new Chinese AI company, emerged seemingly out of nowhere last month. The chatbot for the Chinese startup is now the most downloaded app in the U.S. DeepSeek also gave its models away, as open-source code, which helped make it immediately popular among consumers, businesses and developers.
The chatbot app, however, has intentionally hidden code that could send user login information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company that has been banned from operating in the U.S., according to an analysis by Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot Security, which specializes in data protection and cybersecurity.
Tsarynny’s analysis was published earlier by the Associated Press.
“Our personal information is being sent to China, there is no denial, and the DeepSeek tool is collecting everything that American users connect to it,” Tsarynny said in an interview.
It was Feroot Security’s analysis that inspired Congressmen Darin LaHood and Josh Gottheimer to draw up legislation to block DeepSeek.
Gottheimer says: “This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government.”
Let’s see if passage of the bill is also immediate.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “Texas Governor Greg Abbott Adds to Anti-CCP Defenses”
StoptheCCP.org: “How Did DeepSeek Deep-Six the Chinese and American Competition (If It Did)?”
