The US Department of Homeland Security has ordered all civilian federal agencies to remove DeepSeek products from their IT systems, along with any third-party services developed using DeepSeek implementations, and to stop buying them. The notice was made public on Monday through the Federal Register, the official US register of federal rules, and a post that spread it on X reached hundreds of thousands of views within hours.
According to the order, signed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the exclusion covers all information technology products and services developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd and its affiliated entities. The order is dated July 24, while a June 26 letter from Mullin ordering the exclusion indicates the ban has been in place for months. The Federal Register cites the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Act and a review by the Federal Acquisition Security Council.
Why the order is so broad
The most debated point is the reach beyond DeepSeek's own products. The order also covers "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations". The Register notes it is unclear which products fall into that category, or whether "developed using" means ongoing API access to DeepSeek models or any app written with its help. Questions also remain about AI gateways such as OpenRouter and Vercel AI Gateway, which route requests to multiple models.
The stated reason is national security. DHS says DeepSeek's models present "multiple threat vectors" and that use by government employees or vendors "may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC". The department adds that use could produce actionable intelligence on US persons and agencies, and that the models may contain malware or other vulnerabilities. Bloomberg reports the measure cites national security risks tied to the company's operations in China.
A ban on top of earlier ones
The order is not isolated. The Commerce Department banned DeepSeek from government devices last year, the US Navy directed its members not to use the model, and New York State did the same on government devices and networks, citing data privacy and censorship. What changes now is the scope: the ban covers the entire civilian federal perimeter rather than individual agencies.
The case sits within the wider US-China tension over AI that AlexTech has followed, including the industrial distillation accusations against Moonshot AI and China's investigation of DeepSeek and Moonshot over data leaks toward Claude. Beijing has pushed back on the decision, according to Fox News.
What it means for companies
For vendors working with federal agencies, the immediate consequence is a review of their own technology chain. Anyone who built tools on DeepSeek's models will need to determine whether they fall under the ban, a task complicated by the lack of clear criteria for what "developed with DeepSeek" means. The same question applies to developers who use coding assistants: the text does not say whether they are covered.
DeepSeek has recently updated its models, with V4.1 Flash and the dynamic pricing introduced in August, and it is at the centre of a plan for 160,000 Huawei chips. The federal ban hits the US institutional market directly, one of the most lucrative segments for enterprise AI vendors.
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