Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked the Trump administration on Friday to ban DeepSeek from all government devices.
Citing the Chinese origin of the artificial intelligence tool, Cotton urged Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to prevent federal employees from accessing the chatbot, which exploded in popularity last month.
“While AI can be a useful tool for federal agencies seeking to improve efficiency and deliver value to the U.S. taxpayer, tools that provide our adversaries with advance warning of our government’s plans and policies should be prohibited,” Cotton said in a letter addressed to Vought.
DeepSeek, founded in 2023 by a Chinese hedge fund manager, upended markets when its AI assistant appeared in the Google and Apple stores in January. It quickly overtook ChatGPT as the iPhone’s most downloaded free app. But the tool has prompted the same concerns plaguing TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said the apps pose a threat to national security, giving China access to data on Americans and a bigger platform to spread disinformation.
Researchers have found that DeekSeek censors content critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party.
Cotton, the No. 3 Republican in Senate leadership, supported the congressional push to divest TikTok of its Chinese ownership. Under a law signed last year, parent company ByteDance faced a nationwide ban unless it sold the app by January. But Trump issued an executive order upon taking office extending that deadline by another 75 days.
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In his letter, Cotton asked Vought on Friday for any guidance issued by OMB “regarding the use of foreign adversary origin AI capabilities by federal agencies” or restrictions on the use of those tools.
House lawmakers introduced a bill this month that would ban DeepSeek from federal devices, similar to a prohibition for TikTok signed into law in 2022.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the OMB for comment.