RELEASE: Gottheimer, LaHood Introduce New Bipartisan Legislation to Protect Americans from DeepSeek

Today, February 6, 2025, U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) and Darin LaHood (IL-16) will introduce the bipartisan “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” which will prohibit the use of DeepSeek for federal employees on government-issued devices. 

Gottheimer and LaHood are members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and served as the Ranking Member and Chair of the National Security Agency and Cyber Subcommittee in the 118th Congress, respectively. 

New research has revealed that DeepSeek’s code is directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the capability to share user data with China Mobile. China Mobile, owned by the Chinese government and with close ties to the Chinese military, has been banned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for use in the United States. 

Americans are sharing highly sensitive, proprietary information with DeepSeek — contracts, documents, and financial records. In the wrong hands, this data is an enormous asset to the CCP, a known foreign adversary. 

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans. Now, we have deeply disturbing evidence that they are using DeepSeek to steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens. This is a five alarm national security fire,” said Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5). “We must get to the bottom of DeepSeek’s malign activities. We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security. That’s why I’m introducing this common sense bipartisan legislation with my colleague, Congressman LaHood, to immediately ban DeepSeek from all U.S. government devices. We’ve seen China’s playbook before with TikTok, and we cannot allow it to happen again.” 

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not one the United States can afford to lose,” said Congressman Darin LaHood (IL-16). “The national security threat that DeepSeek—a CCP-affiliated company—poses to the United States is alarming. DeepSeek’s generative AI program acquires the data of U.S. users and stores the information for unidentified use by the CCP. Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP company to obtain sensitive government or personal data. This commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation will ban the app from federal workers’ phones while closing backdoor operations the company seeks to exploit for access. It is critical that Congress safeguard Americans’ data and continue to ensure American leadership in AI. I look forward to working with Rep. Gottheimer and my colleagues in Congress to pass this critical piece of legislation.”

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