As the Chinese AI application DeepSeek gains massive popularity among American users, officials from the Trump administration, lawmakers, and cybersecurity experts are voicing concerns about the potential risks it poses to U.S. national security.
DeepSeek made its U.S. debut on Monday, quickly reaching the status of the most downloaded free application in Apple’s app store. Its launch sent ripples through Wall Street, as investors grappled with the sudden emergence of a budget-friendly, open-source generative AI tool capable of rivaling leading AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Nvidia, an American chip developer specializing in AI technology, saw its shares drop 17%, resulting in a staggering $600 billion loss in market value—a record-setting one-day decline for a U.S. stock.
President Trump described the application’s explosive rollout as a “wake-up call” on Monday. By Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the National Security Council (NSC) would investigate the national security ramifications of DeepSeek’s launch, emphasizing that the administration aims to “maintain American supremacy in AI.”
Several lawmakers also weighed in, expressing apprehensions regarding the application’s accessibility to U.S. citizens.
“We cannot allow Chinese Communist Party technologies like DeepSeek to jeopardize our national security and exploit our innovations to further their own AI initiatives,” stated Rep. John Moolenaar, a Republican from Michigan and chair of the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. His statement was shared on social media on Tuesday. “We must act quickly to implement stricter export controls on technologies vital to DeepSeek’s AI capabilities.”
The attention on DeepSeek coincides with escalating tensions over trade, technology, and various other issues between the two global powers. The U.S. has already enacted substantial export controls on China to curb its semiconductor production essential for advanced AI, with the latest restrictions instituted in December.
“At the President’s direction, the NSC and other government entities are addressing concerns related to AI, China, and data security,” agency spokesperson Brian Hughes told CBS News via email. “As the President has emphasized, U.S. policy aims to position the United States as the global leader in AI.”
Concerns for User Security
While Moolenaar’s remarks might signal a potential congressional response, Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience, cautioned that DeepSeek’s entry into the U.S. raises serious data security and privacy issues for users. Chinese law grants the government extensive power to access data from companies based in China.
“An increasing number of users will lead to more personal data being potentially handed over to the [Chinese Communist Party] and forwarded directly to mainland China, which could inform them about users’ activities,” Burley told CBS News.
“They might use it for behavior modification initiatives, disinformation campaigns, and targeted messaging catering to Western audiences,” he added.
DeepSeek, headquartered in Hangzhou, China, states in its privacy policy that it retains personal information collected from users “on secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
The policy highlights that the company gathers data such as users’ “device model, operating system, keystroke patterns, IP address, and system language.” Additionally, DeepSeek collects “service-related, diagnostic, and performance information, including crash reports and performance logs,” as indicated by the company.
A Distinction from TikTok
DeepSeek’s reliance on servers in mainland China sets it apart from TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform that Congress attempted to ban citing national security concerns prior to President Trump’s executive order last week that instructed the Justice Department to hold off on enforcement for 75 days.
In a bid to alleviate U.S. regulatory worries, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, transferred all U.S. data to infrastructure owned by American software giant Oracle in 2022.
The legislation aimed at banning TikTok—the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” signed into law by President Biden last April—gives the federal government substantial authority to take action against tech platforms owned by entities from countries deemed adversarial to the U.S.
This law permits Congress to mandate that a platform separates its U.S. operations from foreign ownership, and can lead to shutdowns if the platform is deemed a significant threat. It encompasses any platform that allows content sharing, has over one million monthly active users, is owned by a company located in a foreign adversary-controlled nation, and has been identified by the president as posing a notable national security risk.
However, DeepSeek may be perceived as a lesser threat because it is an open-source large language model, according to Matt Sheehan, a China fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Many of these open-source applications can be directly used on other platforms. For example, Perplexity, a significant U.S. AI company, currently operates a version of DeepSeek without the associated data privacy or security risks,” he told CBS News.
The Issue of Censorship
DeepSeek users outside of China may encounter issues related to censorship. A CBS News analysis revealed that DeepSeek did not return any results when prompted for information regarding the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the subsequent crackdown in Beijing.
Burley from the Centre for Information Resilience believes that such suppression of information on an app downloaded by millions may compel policymakers to take decisive action.
“It is essential for Western governments—the U.K., Canada, the U.S.—to assess whether the Apple store and Android store should host this large language model when it’s evidently curated to promote Chinese narratives and censorship,” he remarked.
