Signed in June but made public on 19 October, an order from the Ministry of Internal Security requires DeepSeek to be removed, including where it is integrated into third-party products.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ordering U.S. civilian federal agencies to stop purchasing DeepSeek's products and services and to delete those already deployed in their systems. The notice was filed on October 19 with the Federal Register for official publication on the 20th, while the underlying directive had been signed by Secretary Markwayne Mullin on June 26. The Department of Defense, subject to its own rules, is not affected.
Indirect integrations too
The text is based on the Federal Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 (FASCSA), which has so far been mainly used against telecoms hardware and equipment. It also targets products from third-party suppliers built on DeepSeek bricks, which closes the door to dependencies hidden in commercial services. Exemptions remain possible, but must be requested 60 days in advance and solidly justified.
To justify the measure, the DHS cites several threat vectors: Chinese laws that allow authorities to access company data, the collection of personal information at registration, data transfers to China that could provide information on American citizens or programs, and flaws in DeepSeek's iOS application.
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