National News Desk, February 2025
Lawmakers in Congress are moving to ban an upstart Chinese artificial intelligence app from government-owned devices over concerns it could be used to provide information to China’s government, following a similar strategy to the moves that ultimately led to the ban of TikTok. A bill introduced Friday by Reps. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and Josh Gettheimer, D-N.J., is moving to keep government devices from accessing DeepSeek, a new Chinese AI company that burst onto the scene last month and temporarily sent tech stocks into a tailspin as it climbed up app store’s popularity charts and became the most-downloaded app in the U.S.
The bill comes after an analysis of DeepSeek was found to have intentionally hidden code that could send user log-in information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company banned from operating in the United States. “This is a five-alarm national security fire,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We must get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities. We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”
