The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered civilian federal agencies to stop buying products from Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek and to strip its technology from their IT systems.
It excludes Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd and its affiliates from civilian procurement, according to a notice published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.
It also requires removal of DeepSeek products, and of third-party products and services built using DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency systems.
The order applies to civilian executive branch agencies. It does not cover national security systems or secure compartmented information systems, which fall under the Pentagon and the intelligence community.
Agencies must exclude DeepSeek "effective immediately", including from approved-product lists and e-commerce marketplaces used for government buying.
They must also remove covered products immediately or seek an exception.
Exception requests must be made in writing and justified by mission-critical need or national interest, and the order sets a 60-day window for them.
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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will rule on requests and may give technical help to agencies that lack the capacity to comply.
Until removal is complete, agencies are encouraged to monitor traffic, step up logging and flag unusual activity. DHS will review the order within a year and annually thereafter.
Why DHS Acted
The order says DeepSeek's models "present multiple threat vectors". It notes that the company's servers are in China, whose laws give government cyber and intelligence agencies wide powers to access private infrastructure.
DHS also says account creation on DeepSeek-hosted services collects personal data and may digitally fingerprint users.
The order warns that prompts entered by US government staff or vendors could carry sensitive data to China, where it could yield "actionable intelligence" on US persons or programmes when combined with public data.
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It adds that open-source research has found critical vulnerabilities in DeepSeek's iOS app.
The action rests on the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018, which lets the DHS secretary issue such orders on the recommendation of the Federal Acquisition Security Council.
Months Of Restrictions
The order follows piecemeal curbs since DeepSeek's low-cost models rattled the tech industry in early 2025.
The Pentagon's Defense Information Systems Agency began blocking access on 28 January 2025, and the Navy, NASA and the Commerce Department also barred it on government devices.
Texas and Virginia were among states that imposed similar bans, and Congress saw a bipartisan bill to ban DeepSeek on government devices.
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