Millions of Americans have downloaded the Chinese AI game DeepSeek. It may come after terminating it.

Cyber Report
  • Foreign relational AI DeepSeek placed second only to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Federal security experts in China were concerned that one free app was installed last week, despite the government’s restrictions on domestic businesses sharing data with the PRC.
  • While a legal move to legalize DeepSeek akin to TikTok might follow, federal restrictions were hastily implemented from NASA to the U.S. Navy and from the State of Texas to Taiwan and Italy.
  • According to a national security analyst interviewed by CNBC, DeepSeek’s privacy policy “isn’t worth the paper it is written on,” according to security companies that have already found flaws in the software that allowed for information leakage.
billion were wiped out of the international software market by this year’s reports that the DeepSeek Chatbot application, developed by China, was significantly more popular than the US-developed ChatGPT from Open AI.
Leon Neal | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Many Americans are learning about DeepSeek, the newest Chinese conceptual AI software, which has become a top-ranking search engine. 1 saved standing on Apple’s App Store last year. Is it wise for millions of Americans to allow the software to start playing around with their individual search inquiries in a time of U.S. China tech rivalry and mistrust and organizations from NASA to the U.S. Navy and Chinese government to prohibit use of DeepSeek within days?

AI experts were caught off guard by DeepSeek’s sudden rise, which was reportedly done on a quick timeline and at a budget that was previously believed to be much lower. However, there is still about the claims, and estimates suggest by hundreds of millions of dollars. Privacy advocates were also caught off guard, and they already warn that Americans are putting themselves and their privacy at risk. Their concerns aren’t predicated on AI development costs.

According to Dewardric McNeal, managing director and senior policy analyst at risk management firm Longview Global, which advises companies on China strategy, the amount of information and data that bad actors in China could extract from DeepSeek is 20 times worse than what could be gathered from a Google search.

” It is a rich trove of intelligence” ,&nbsp, said McNeal, who has studied the details of Chinese government data sharing requirements for domestic firms.

He noted that there are obvious risks, such as stealing personal data or health information, and that prominent cybersecurity firms are already . According to DeepSeek, it was the target of a significant cyberattack last week.

But McNeal is just as worried about the “bigger picture” competition between nations.

We frequently don’t discuss the degree to which this information paints a mental map through understanding queries, McNeal said.” I want us to speak broader than just the narrow data.

For instance, Chinese intelligence might use the wider patterns of DeepSeek queries to learn about various American industries and stoke division among the general public.

” The world won’t end tomorrow because I logged into DeepSeek”, McNeal said, but he added that does not mean there isn’t considerable risk involved. For one, the open-source AI approach could give China access to US-based supply chains at the local level, enabling them to discover how companies are doing and how to compete with them more effectively. According to McNeal, “national security professionals are considering it in those terms.”

Matt Pearl, a special advisor to the National Security Council’s deputy national security advisor in the Biden administration and current director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said implies that users have control over what is collected, but it should raise alarm.

” DeepSeek’s privacy policy is not worth the paper it is written on”, Pearl said. Any information entered into the app is considered fair game because of PRC laws. Through keystroke patterns, a DeepSeek user can be tracked across all devices, information gathered from advertisers, and DeepSeek could also seek to leverage cameras and microphones, according to Pearl.

It poses a risk, Pearl said, “if they can do it technically in the app and the PRC determines it is something they want to do.”

However, Pearl claimed that cybersecurity and the potential for a large malware injection are the main factors that keep him awake at night. It is difficult to emphasize all the various ways it might be used. And, in theory, it could be done in a single update to the app”, he said.

Officials at High Flyer, the Chinese-backed hedge fund which created DeepSeek, did not respond to a request for comment.

ChatGPT still far ahead of DeepSeek

Despite having a significant impact on the markets and leading AI companies like Nvidia, DeepSeek still has a long way to go before it can catch up to ChatGPT, which is still raising a formidable war chest. A few days after the DeepSeek headlines dominated the tech and market news cycle, OpenAI was reportedly in talks for a$ 40 billion funding round.

According to online analytics platform Semrush, DeepSeek is still far behind ChatGPT in terms of consumer activity, with the OpenAI app maintaining an average daily visit count of tens of millions. However, ChatGPT has experienced a recent decline in traffic: it had 22.1 million visitors on October 1, 2024, but that number had fallen to 14.9 million by January 19 according to Semrush. At the same time, even before it became a major national news story, DeepSeek’s online footprint was growing — from 2.3K average U. S. daily visits on October 1, 2024, to 71.2K by January 19 ( a week before it caused the stock market to tank ).

Joe Jones, director of research and insights for The International Association of Privacy Professionals, a policy-neutral nonprofit that promotes privacy and AI governance, says that disruptors like DeepSeek can make the organization’s job more difficult.

” It is challenging for people to do that work when you have proliferating laws that are complex, diverse, and often in tension, and technologies like DeepSeek that come at you from left field, upend status quos and make you rethink good governance”, Jones said. The debate becomes more contentious because it is spread across borders. ” This has gotten a whole lot more complex in this turbocharged geopolitical environment”, Jones added.

Liang Wenfeng, founder of startup DeepSeek, delivers the keynote speech during the 10th China Private Equity Golden Bull Awards on August 30, 2019 in Shanghai, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

According to Brendan Englot, director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the challenges will not be resolved any time soon. ” AI is now a global international competition, and we will see breakthroughs all over the world”, Englot said.

More DeepSeeks are coming thanks to the open-source technology approach used by DeepSeek, . ” There will be many more disruptions just like this one shortly”, Englot said.

For consumers, the tradeoffs will need to be navigated with an understanding of the data implications. The tools are being developed to improve lives by fostering creativity and efficiency. You can share your data, which is tempting, but you must assume that it will be used responsibly once you do, according to Englot.

Due to DeepSeek’s success, export restrictions on advanced chips meant to stifle Chinese AI efforts may need to be even stricter. ” To be clear, they’re not a way to duck the competition between the US and China”, wrote Dario Amodei, CEO of gen AI startup Anthropic, in a blog post this week. In the end, AI companies in the US and other democracies must have better models than those in China if they want to win. However, we shouldn’t hand over the technological prowess of the Chinese Communist Party.

Pearl says it may ultimately fall to the U. S. government to regulate or legislate.

” The government has the authority to ban DeepSeek under the same law that they did to ban TikTok,” the statement read. The law that was passed doesn’t just apply to TikTok”, Pearl said, citing provisions of the law related to a company controlled by a foreign adversary, or deemed by the U. S. president to be a threat to national security. Pearl believes that US-based tech companies will likely lobby more aggressively for AI in spite of President Trump’s opposition to a TikTok ban.

U.S. tech companies are going to be aggressive with the administration, saying DeepSeek will dominate the AI market, and it is crucial that U.S. companies stay in the lead,” Pearl said. Trump will speak with them at the highest levels. Why should we allow China to dominate our markets when they have made a name for themselves by keeping the USA out of theirs?

Lawmakers target DeepSeek as a potential national security risk

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