Here's the transcription of the reasoning: > Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd. (hereinafter DeepSeek), a foreign, privately-owned company, located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides multiple artificial intelligence applications available widely and free of charge. DeepSeek’s models present multiple threat vectors. DeepSeek servers are located in the PRC, and the PRC legal system permits extensive authority to government cyber and intelligence functions to access private company infrastructure. For DeepSeek-hosted instances of their models, DeepSeek’s account generation process collects personally identifiable information (PII) and may also track and digitally fingerprint users. DeepSeek’s most widely used applications function through a prompt-and-response process that requires presenting information to the model, and which may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC if used by U.S. government employees or vendors. The transfer of the aforementioned information to the PRC, either independently or in combination with publicly available data, could produce actionable intelligence on U.S. persons and/or government programs. The models themselves may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities. Indeed, open-source security research has found that the DeepSeek iOS mobile application contains multiple critical vulnerabilities.
johnnyApplePRNG
Deepseek V4.1 Flash 1017 is out of this world good ... and cheap ... that's why.
jacquesm
The models may well contain malware or security vulnerabilities. But they are at least open to inspection because the weights are available, the same can not be said about US providers of inference such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
kidfiji
Please excuse my lack of full context, but if the weights are open and the model can be self hosted, what’s the actual security risk for that case? Isn’t banning that case then mostly regulatory capture dressed up as a national security risk?
sciencesama
how can an open source model be banned ?
throw0101c
> The order's summary of risks says DeepSeek's servers are in China and that Chinese law "permits extensive authority to government cyber and intelligence functions to access private company infrastructure". So the Chinese version of the American CLOUD Act?
grafmax
The regulatory capture begins.
Cameri
It comes down to which backdoored models you trust.
metalman
the order(paraphrased) is 'we are imediately ordering you to, or not to, rip out deep seek, depending on how you feel about that ,and what might go wrong, and write to us about it, sometime in the next couple of months'
matt3210
How bad would it be if China banned anthropic and openAI?
phendrenad2
A good case of "Don't do A or B, because A is bad" Stop downloading cookie recipes from China, and you can't use cookie recipes that came from China either, because accessing the cookie recipe in China could give you malware. It doesn't make much sense but this is the government that gave us such greats as "the internet isa series of tubes".
mmaunder
And so it begins. Regulatory Capture Stage Complete!
neuronexmachina
When it says civilian agencies are ordered to purge all "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations", what does that actually mean? Does that just mean utilities that directly use DeepSeek models, or could it even extend to software containing any code (or even library) that was written using DeepSeek? Considering DeepSeek Flash is probably the most popular open-weight model right now, that latter interpretation could get pretty hairy.
ssivark
Why specifically DeepSeek, when there's a whole cohort of Chinese open weights models? GLM, Qwen, Kimi, Minimax, etc.
CaliforniaKarl
https://archive.ph/MQIiN
anon373839
The timing of this is unsurprising, with Anthropic’s Q3 revenues flattening out and the IPO in jeopardy. I expect more efforts to prop up the money-furnace labs in the coming days.
himata4113
This appears to ban deepseek first party usage, not the model itself. It specifically mentions the iOS app as well.
asanineassasin
The system acknowledges even the slightest bit that the current course attacks the systems currency which is reward for loyalty aka shareholdertrust of the gentry. At the same time its pushing forth is a admittance that it has no control over the process happening, but finds expected outcome without so catastrophic that rolling that russian roulett dice is preferable. The whole mountainside of western civilization is in motion, but the rules still apply in this cabin, so "get the snow from your ski-boots at the door" kind of law.
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Discussion Highlights (18 comments)
gavinray
Here's the transcription of the reasoning: > Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd. (hereinafter DeepSeek), a foreign, privately-owned company, located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides multiple artificial intelligence applications available widely and free of charge. DeepSeek’s models present multiple threat vectors. DeepSeek servers are located in the PRC, and the PRC legal system permits extensive authority to government cyber and intelligence functions to access private company infrastructure. For DeepSeek-hosted instances of their models, DeepSeek’s account generation process collects personally identifiable information (PII) and may also track and digitally fingerprint users. DeepSeek’s most widely used applications function through a prompt-and-response process that requires presenting information to the model, and which may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC if used by U.S. government employees or vendors. The transfer of the aforementioned information to the PRC, either independently or in combination with publicly available data, could produce actionable intelligence on U.S. persons and/or government programs. The models themselves may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities. Indeed, open-source security research has found that the DeepSeek iOS mobile application contains multiple critical vulnerabilities.
johnnyApplePRNG
Deepseek V4.1 Flash 1017 is out of this world good ... and cheap ... that's why.
jacquesm
The models may well contain malware or security vulnerabilities. But they are at least open to inspection because the weights are available, the same can not be said about US providers of inference such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
kidfiji
Please excuse my lack of full context, but if the weights are open and the model can be self hosted, what’s the actual security risk for that case? Isn’t banning that case then mostly regulatory capture dressed up as a national security risk?
sciencesama
how can an open source model be banned ?
throw0101c
> The order's summary of risks says DeepSeek's servers are in China and that Chinese law "permits extensive authority to government cyber and intelligence functions to access private company infrastructure". So the Chinese version of the American CLOUD Act?
grafmax
The regulatory capture begins.
Cameri
It comes down to which backdoored models you trust.
metalman
the order(paraphrased) is 'we are imediately ordering you to, or not to, rip out deep seek, depending on how you feel about that ,and what might go wrong, and write to us about it, sometime in the next couple of months'
matt3210
How bad would it be if China banned anthropic and openAI?
phendrenad2
A good case of "Don't do A or B, because A is bad" Stop downloading cookie recipes from China, and you can't use cookie recipes that came from China either, because accessing the cookie recipe in China could give you malware. It doesn't make much sense but this is the government that gave us such greats as "the internet isa series of tubes".
mmaunder
And so it begins. Regulatory Capture Stage Complete!
neuronexmachina
When it says civilian agencies are ordered to purge all "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations", what does that actually mean? Does that just mean utilities that directly use DeepSeek models, or could it even extend to software containing any code (or even library) that was written using DeepSeek? Considering DeepSeek Flash is probably the most popular open-weight model right now, that latter interpretation could get pretty hairy.
ssivark
Why specifically DeepSeek, when there's a whole cohort of Chinese open weights models? GLM, Qwen, Kimi, Minimax, etc.
CaliforniaKarl
https://archive.ph/MQIiN
anon373839
The timing of this is unsurprising, with Anthropic’s Q3 revenues flattening out and the IPO in jeopardy. I expect more efforts to prop up the money-furnace labs in the coming days.
himata4113
This appears to ban deepseek first party usage, not the model itself. It specifically mentions the iOS app as well.
asanineassasin
The system acknowledges even the slightest bit that the current course attacks the systems currency which is reward for loyalty aka shareholdertrust of the gentry. At the same time its pushing forth is a admittance that it has no control over the process happening, but finds expected outcome without so catastrophic that rolling that russian roulett dice is preferable. The whole mountainside of western civilization is in motion, but the rules still apply in this cabin, so "get the snow from your ski-boots at the door" kind of law.