US Orders DeepSeek Removed from All Federal Civilian Agencies

The US Department of Homeland Security has formally ordered all federal civilian agencies to strip products developed by DeepSeek and its affiliates from their IT systems and to stop procuring DeepSeek technology, in the broadest government ban yet against a Chinese AI developer. The directive, signed by Secretary Markwayne Mullin and dated July 24, was published in the Federal Register on Monday and covers third-party products and services built with DeepSeek models — sweeping in vendor tools from US companies that integrated the startup's technology.

Scope: wider than any previous restriction The order requires civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products already in place and prohibits new purchases, citing "multiple threat vectors" allegedly presented by the models. DHS pointed to Chinese laws allowing government access to private company infrastructure, an account sign-up process that collects personal information, and the data users hand to the model during prompts.

What makes this order different from earlier piecemeal restrictions — the Commerce Department banned DeepSeek on government devices in March 2025, and the Navy, NASA and other agencies followed — is its breadth: a single directive covering installed software, procurement and downstream products across the entire civilian government. Agencies inside the Department of Defense and intelligence community are excluded. The practical effect is to separate the government market from the commercial one, forcing contractors to audit their stacks for embedded DeepSeek components.

Beijing pushes back as tech rivalry deepens China responded sharply. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said China "will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies" and opposes "the overstretching of the concept of national security." The Ministry of Commerce expressed "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition," saying the US move disregards the consensus reached between the two countries' leaders and warning that China will "take all necessary measures."

The ban lands at a paradoxical moment for DeepSeek: just days before the order was announced, its V4.1-Flash-1017 model claimed the top spot among open-source models on Code Arena: WebDev with 1,670 points, outperforming closed-source rivals including Claude Opus 5 and Grok 4.7. US companies such as Snowflake and Vercel have integrated DeepSeek technology into their products, drawn by costs far below closed-source alternatives. With Congress advancing legislation to bar government purchases of software built on Chinese AI models, and a China-US AI Dialogue agreed last month, the gap between commercial adoption and government policy continues to widen.

Sources: NBC News, Reuters, POLITICO, China Daily, Science and Technology Daily, threerouter