The Department of Homeland Security has ordered federal civilian agencies to strip products and services linked to Chinese artificial intelligence developer DeepSeek from their systems. The order was filed on Monday and published in the Federal Register the next day.
What the order covers
Civilian agencies must remove DeepSeek products already in place, and they may not buy new ones. The order also reaches third-party services developed using DeepSeek models, a scope that sweeps in vendor tools built on top of the Chinese company's software.
The departments named in reporting include Treasury, State and Justice. Agencies inside the Department of Defense are excluded. The restriction took effect at the end of July, according to the notice, and the signed order is posted on regulations.gov under docket DHS-2026-0628.
Why DHS cited multiple threat vectors
DHS said DeepSeek's models "present multiple threat vectors". The agency pointed to Chinese laws that allow the government to reach private company infrastructure, an account process that collects personal information, and a prompt-and-response cycle in which users hand data to the model.
"Use of its products may result in the transfer of sensitive data" to China if used by government employees or contractors, the notice said. The order also excludes DeepSeek and its affiliates from federal procurement under a 2018 supply-chain law that lets agencies bar vendors on national security grounds.
A wider push against Chinese models
The move extends a piecemeal approach. The Commerce Department banned DeepSeek on government-furnished equipment in March 2025, and the Navy told personnel not to use it. NASA and other agencies followed with their own restrictions.
What is different now is the breadth. A single order covers procurement, installed software and downstream products, and it applies across civilian government rather than one agency. That will force contractors to audit their stacks for embedded DeepSeek components, a task that is easier to order than to complete.
DeepSeek's open-weight models are cheap to run and have won users well beyond China, including some US companies drawn by lower costs. Lawmakers and national security officials have said that adoption worries them. The practical effect of the order is to separate the government market from the commercial one, at least for now.