US bans DeepSeek AI from civilian government agencies and tech built on it

The United States has banned DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence company, from most of its government systems: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered civilian federal agencies to stop using DeepSeek's models and any technology built with their help, BBC News reported on Monday. The order was made public on Monday, 19 October, but has been in force since the end of July.

What the DeepSeek ban covers

• Who: civilian agencies, including the Department of the Treasury, the State Department and the Department of Justice.
• What: DeepSeek's own models and apps, and any software built with the aid of them.
• Who is left out: agencies within the Department of Defense, which are excluded from this order.

The DHS notice did not spell out the security concerns behind the decision, the BBC said. The BBC asked DHS, DeepSeek and the Chinese embassy in Washington for comment.

Why Washington is moving against Chinese AI

The Trump administration has criticised Chinese AI firms all year. White House technology lead Michael Kratsios wrote in an internal memo that American AI firms had suffered "malicious exploitation", mainly by Chinese rivals. US companies including OpenAI and Anthropic have said some Chinese firms, DeepSeek among them, effectively copied their models. President Donald Trump has framed AI as the central race with China.

DeepSeek is popular because it is open source and cheap. The company said it spent about $6 million to train the first version of its model, against roughly $100 million for OpenAI's GPT-4, and that revelation sent tech stocks tumbling in early 2025. Its free chatbot app has been one of the most downloaded in Apple's App Store, and US firms such as Snowflake, Vercel and OpenRouter offer its models to customers. Its newest model came out last week; we covered DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and its pricing on Monday.

What it means in Pakistan

Nothing changes for users here: the US order applies only to American federal agencies, and DeepSeek's app and API remain available in Pakistan. Pakistani developers and startups that build on DeepSeek because it costs a fraction of closed models should note one thing, though. If they sell software to US government clients, or to companies that do, a product built on DeepSeek may now be off-limits for that customer.

For freelancers paid in dollars for AI work, our freelancer tax calculator shows what you keep after tax on export earnings, and the currency converter has today's dollar rate.

What happens next

The ban arrives as US-China technology tension rises again, and as Anthropic and OpenAI prepare to list on the stock market in the coming months. We will update this story if DeepSeek or China responds.