Donald Trump administration likely to ban Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek from US govt devices. Here’s why

DeepSeek ban in US: The Donald Trump administration will likely ban the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot mobile app DeepSeek from all US government devices due to 'national-security concerns'. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, US federal officials are worried about DeepSeek's handling of user data, which the AI giant says is stored on servers in China. 

The US administration officials were also considering banning the chatbot from app stores and limiting how US-based cloud service providers could offer DeepSeek's AI models to their customers. However, the Wall Street Journal added that those discussions were still at an early stage. DeepSeek's low-cost AI models triggered a major sell-off in global equity markets in January, as investors worried that its arrival could threaten current AI market leaders.

Also Read: DeepSeek under review: US Congress blocks use of Chinese AI for employees amid data security fears

According to the Wall Street Journal, a group of 21 state attorneys general urged Congress on March 6 to pass a bill to bar government devices from downloading and using DeepSeek artificial intelligence software on government devices.

Meanwhile, shares of Alibaba Group Holdings surged seven per cent earlier this week after unveiling a model that the company said performs as well as DeepSeek at just a fraction of the data required. According to Bloomberg, the top Chinese e-commerce company, in 2025, became a key player in China's AI industry by launching its QwQ-32B model, which outperforms the previous version with only five per cent of the parameters used by DeepSeek’s R1 model.

Also Read: Ashwini Vaishnaw launches AI Compute Portal, 9 times larger than DeepSeek; announces 27 AI labs

Against this backdrop, shares of Alibaba jumped up to 7.5 per cent in Hong Kong trading, marking its biggest intra-day gains in nearly two weeks. So far this year, the company has seen a strong recovery, adding $135 billion to its market capitalization. It has been recovering from a lengthy government crackdown.

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who is also the head of the Chinese quant hedge fund High-Flyer. The company shot to fame after various benchmarks showed that its V3 large language model outperformed those of many popular US tech giants while being developed at a much lower cost. DeepSeek's R1 language model, which mimics aspects of human reasoning, also matched and outperformed OpenAI's latest O1 model in many benchmarks.

Also Read: Alibaba Group Holding share price surges 7% on unveiling DeepSeek contender