 "How contagious is it? – Firstpost")
Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the House to ban DeepSeek, the Chinese AI chatbot app, from government-owned devices.
This comes amid security concerns that the app may hand user information to the Chinese government.
The legislation was put forward by Republican Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois and Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey.
It follows a Congressional ban on TikTok, whose parent company is based in Beijing. Trump suspended enforcement of the law as he sought a deal to force a sale of the app.
“This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government,” said Gottheimer, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The new Chinese AI company DeepSeek entered the scene in January and quickly garnered significant attention. It’s the most downloaded app in the U.S.
DeepSeek has also provided open-source code, which has made it popular among developers, businesses, and consumers.
But the app also has hidden code that could send user login information to the state-owned telecommunications company China Mobile, which has been banned from operating in the U.S. That’s according to an analysis by the chief executive of the data protection and cybersecurity company Feroot Security, Ivan Tsarynny, whose analysis was previously published 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 told The Journal.
The analysis led to the bipartisan legislation from Gottheimer and LaHood, the top members of a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee.
“Under no circumstances can we allow a [Chinese Communist Party] company to obtain sensitive government or personal data,” LaHood told The Journal.
On Tuesday, Australia banned the app from its government devices, much like a number of South Korean government ministries, while Italy issued a ban last month.
Multiple U.S. federal agencies, such as the U.S. Navy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have already blocked DeepSeek. Meanwhile, Texas became the first U.S. state to ban the app from its government devices.
In 2022, Congress passed a spending bill that included a ban on TikTok on government devices. Lawmakers grew concerned that the Chinese government could access user data and banned the app from government devices and, subsequently, from the country as a whole.
Last year, Congress passed legislation to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless a U.S. buyer could be found to force a separation from the Chinese owner ByteDance.
The deadline to find that buyer was extended by President Donald Trump. On numerous occasions, TikTok has insisted that it doesn’t share U.S. data with the Chinese government.
