【ワシントン】米連邦議会下院で6日、中国の人工知能（AI）新興企業ディープシークのチャットボットアプリについて、政府端末での利用を禁止する超党派法案が提出される見通しだ。このアプリがユーザー情報を中国政府に提供しかねないとする安全保障上の懸念が新たに浮上している。
法案はダリン・ラフッド下院議員（共和、イリノイ州）とジョシュ・ゴットハイマー下院議員（民主、ニュージャージー州）が起草。議会が中国発の動画投稿アプリ「TikTok（ティックトック）」を禁止しようと採用した戦略と同様の内容だ。
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers plan to introduce a bill Thursday that would ban DeepSeek’s chatbot application from government-owned devices, over new security concerns that the app could provide user information to the Chinese government.
The legislation written by Reps. Darin LaHood, an Illinois Republican, and Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, is echoing a strategy that Congress used to ban Chinese-controlled TikTok from government devices, which marked the beginning of the effort to block the company from operating in the U.S.
“This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government,” Gottheimer said.
DeepSeek, a disruptive new Chinese AI company, emerged seemingly out of nowhere last month. The chatbot for the Chinese startup is now the most downloaded app in the U.S. DeepSeek also gave its models away, as open-source code, which helped make it immediately popular among consumers, businesses and developers.
The chatbot app, however, has intentionally hidden code that could send user login information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company that has been banned from operating in the U.S., according to an analysis by Ivan Tsarynny, chief executive of Feroot Security, which specializes in data protection and cybersecurity. Tsarynny’s analysis was published earlier by the Associated Press.
“Our personal information is being sent to China, there is no denial, and the DeepSeek tool is collecting everything that American users connect to it,” Tsarynny said in an interview.
That analysis pushed LaHood and Gottheimer to develop the legislation. The two are the top Republican and Democrat, respectively, on a subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Under no circumstances can we allow a CCP company to obtain sensitive government or personal data,” said LaHood, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
Other nations have already taken steps to ban the app from obtaining government data. Australia banned DeepSeek from its government systems on Tuesday citing data-security concerns, as did key South Korean government ministries this week. Italy did so in January.
DeepSeek didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Some federal agencies such as the U.S. Navy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have blocked the app due to security and privacy concerns. Texas was the first U.S. state to ban DeepSeek on government devices, citing national-security concerns.
Congress banned TikTok from government devices in 2022, sliding the legislation into a spending bill. Lawmakers became alarmed that the Chinese government would be able to access user data and sought to first ban the app from government devices and then overall in the country. Congress passed legislation last year to ban TikTok in the U.S., unless an American buyer was found to force it to be separated from ByteDance, its Chinese owner.
When the deadline passed and TikTok hadn’t been sold, President Trump extended the time for the app to find a U.S. buyer. TikTok has repeatedly said that it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and wouldn’t if asked.
Write to Natalie Andrews at [email protected]
