Federal lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban the use of China’s DeepSeek and artificial intelligence (AI) models built in China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea from government agencies.
The No Adversarial AI Act, authored by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a ranking member on the committee, marks the largest attempted ban of the controversial AI model in the U.S.
“We are in a new Cold War — and AI is the strategic technology at the center. The CCP doesn’t innovate — it steals, scales, and subverts,” Moolenaar said in a statement.
The bill would mandate the creation and maintenance of a publicly available list of AI models developed in “adversarial nations” by the Federal Acquisition Security Council as a guide for federal agencies. Exemptions for research and testing would be required from Congress.
“From IP theft and chip smuggling to embedding AI in surveillance and military platforms, the Chinese Communist Party is racing to weaponize this technology. We must draw a clear line: U.S. government systems cannot be powered by tools built to serve authoritarian interests,” Moolenaar said.
Should the bill become law, it would expect a DeepSeek ban to all government agencies. The controversial AI model is already outlawed by the Department of Commerce, NASA, and U.S. Navy.
The sudden rise of DeepSeek earlier this year – an ultra-cheap, powerful alternative to Western competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google – evoked AI’s so-called “Sputnik moment,” roiled Wall Street and the market valuations of Big Tech, while prompting considerable backlash from lawmakers, privacy advocates, and the tech industry worldwide.
Indeed, German authorities are looking to ban DeepSeek from Apple and Google apps stores in that country out of concerns the app is illegally shipping user data such as chat histories, uploaded files, and device information straight to the Chinese government. For similar reasons, DeepSeek is banned in Italy, Australia, and Taiwan.
“Companies should presume that any information their employees choose to put in [DeepSeek and similar] apps will become property of the Chinese Communist Party. Any ban will take time and might even then be ineffective – there are always ways around it,” Alastair Paterson, CEO of Harmonic Security, an AI data protection company, said in an email. “Better, and more immediately, organizations need to educate employees that no sensitive information at all should be put into China-based apps and take technology steps to screen and block any confidential data going into them – the tools are available.”
