US House panel brands China’s DeepSeek 'profound threat' to America’s national security

Beijing/Washington: A US congressional committee has branded the Chinese artificial intelligence tool DeepSeek as a “profound threat” to America’s national security amid the intensifying trade war between the two countries.

DeepSeek was described as being closely associated with the Communist Party and “designed to unlawfully undermine US technological leadership and critical American policies to protect national security”, said the report by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

The report, published on Wednesday, said that DeepSeek had ties to military research and strategic labs, including the Zhejiang Lab, which plays a crucial role in advancing China’s scientific and technological capabilities, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

“DeepSeek represents a profound threat to our nation’s security. Although it presents itself as just another AI chatbot … closer inspection reveals that the app siphons data back to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), creates security vulnerabilities for its users, and relies on a model that covertly censors and manipulates information pursuant to Chinese law,” the report said.

It also cited research from Feroot Security that said DeepSeek’s operations were funnelling American user data back to China through “back-end infrastructure connected to China Mobile”, and integrated “tracking tools” from other Chinese tech giants such as ByteDance and Tencent.

DeepSeek, which is the latest AI offering, grabbed the global attention for its low-cost model. Also, DeepSeek overtook ChatGPT as the top-ranked free app on Apple’s Appstore.

The US House Committee report was published as the US and China slapped each other with high tariffs. While the US imposed 245 per cent tariffs against Chinese exports, Beijing hit back with 125 per cent levies on US exports to China The House Committee also called on the chip giant Nvidia to provide information about its customers and dealings with the start-up.

Significantly, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang has made a surprise visit to Beijing on Thursday and met senior Chinese officials a day after the US chip giant disclosed that Washington will now require a licence to export its H20 chips to China.

State-run CCTV reported that Huang arrived in Beijing on Thursday at the invitation of the state-backed China Council for the promotion of international trade, which represented Chinese exporters.

Huang, 62, held talks with Ren Hongbin, chairman of the council, and expressed hope that Nvidia could continue to cooperate with China given that it is a “key market” for the company.

A number of countries including India clamped restrictions on officials accessing DeepSeek over suspicions of data leaks.

China criticised the restrictions saying that they amounted to politicisation of trade and tech issues.

The US committee described state-owned China Mobile as a “military-related” company and ByteDance, the owner of popular social media app TikTok as “foreign adversary-controlled”, while the Pentagon has designated Tencent as a Chinese military company.

“With its direct ties to China’s security and surveillance infrastructure and its unchecked data collection practices, (DeepSeek) can function as an open-source intelligence asset feeding American user data into an adversarial system,” the report, by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said.

“The danger is clear: millions of Americans are now using an AI system designed to serve the CCP. Beijing is not just censoring the internet at home, it is embedding its Great Firewall into platforms Americans use every day,” it said.