DHS Bars DeepSeek as Federal AI Risks Mount

The Department of Homeland Security ordered federal civilian agencies to remove China’s DeepSeek AI from their systems and barred them from buying its products or services in the future, citing the risk that sensitive data could reach the People’s Republic of China. The directive also covers third-party services built using DeepSeek. It puts federal control over agencies’ AI tools alongside a broader effort to ready government networks for attacks accelerated by artificial intelligence.

Federal Cyber Readiness

The Federal Chief Information Security Officer’s Council plans to gather agencies in early November for a governmentwide tabletop exercise focused on AI-enabled cyberattacks. Mike Duffy, the acting federal CISO, said the exercise will assess the capabilities, processes and personnel agencies need to respond. Cyberattacks using artificial intelligence rose by 89 percent in 2025 compared with 2024, and the report said AI use in cyberattacks is increasing this year.

Duffy described the exercise at ACT-IAC’s Cybersecurity Summit on Oct. 14. “We are preparing for the second all full government CISO level tabletop exercise,” he said. The first governmentwide CISO-level exercise took place the previous year and focused more broadly on cybersecurity readiness and resilience. Duffy said council members would meet with security operations center directors to discuss how the federal enterprise can ensure it has the capabilities, processes and people needed to respond.

CrowdStrike’s 2026 report, which Duffy cited, found that hackers using AI-accelerated phishing and automated reconnaissance were cutting the time from initial access to impact. The report said AI attacks had elevated less sophisticated threat actors and amplified the most advanced ones. The CISO Council has brought back its AI working group, focused on security governance, and launched a post-quantum cryptography working group in the previous month. Duffy said the post-quantum effort would take years and require expertise and workforce migration. He cited the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency among government organizations working on what comes next.

Federal Controls and Mission Risks

DHS issued the DeepSeek order under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018, after reviewing a recommendation and supporting evidence from the Federal Acquisition Security Council. Its notice said the models “present multiple threat vectors” and that their use “may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the [People’s Republic of China] if used by US government employees or vendors.” The notice didn’t detail the security concerns or set a deadline for agencies to act.

The Commerce Department banned DeepSeek from government devices the previous year, and the U.S. Navy told its members not to use the model over potential security concerns. New York state also barred it from government devices and networks, citing “serious concerns” about possible data privacy and censorship risks. DeepSeek’s models offer cheaper alternatives to products from Anthropic and OpenAI. The article said their performance had lagged behind leading U.S. models, though the gap had narrowed over the previous year by some measures. Unlike closed models from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, DeepSeek is an open-weight model that users can customize more easily.

Travis Rosiek, public sector chief technology officer at Rubrik, argued in a Federal News Network commentary that agencies should plan to keep critical missions running during cyberattacks, rather than rely only on preventing intrusions. He cited the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, which said adversaries were exploiting supply chains to compromise software source code and position themselves inside federal networks. Their objective: gain persistent access to shut down critical services, disable power grids and disrupt military readiness.

Data Policy and Infrastructure

Rosiek cited the self-replicating Shai-Hulud worm, which attackers deployed into developer pipelines in 2025. He wrote that it bypassed perimeter defenses, harvested cloud credentials and moved into private- and public-sector networks. Disaster recovery plans built for natural disasters, power outages, floods and hardware failures don’t adequately address cyberattacks, he said. Rosiek urged agencies to design systems that can isolate breached segments while keeping core mission functions running, test recovery plans with security, cloud, IT and backup administrators, and inventory data, identify its owners and map dependencies.

The Trump administration released a national cyber strategy in March. The Office of Management and Budget has focused on policies, procedures and capabilities to defend against cyberattacks, including changes to cyber logging architecture policy. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has changed its approach to the known exploited vulnerabilities catalog, prioritizing vulnerabilities based on factors including likely exploitation and potential mission impact. Agencies are also working under a binding operational directive to secure and modernize endpoint devices. A CISO Council sprint is assessing how much progress agencies can make with existing resources before the end of the fiscal year, including removing outdated edge devices and infrastructure.

In a separate commentary, Taka Ariga, vice president for data policy and impact at the Data Foundation, called for a national data strategy. He said the United Kingdom published a National Data Strategy in 2020 and China developed national policy and a dedicated agency around data as a strategic asset, while the United States had no national strategy. The Data Foundation launched a community-led effort to guide one, with a living document planned for feedback, discussion and critique. Ariga said the effort isn’t intended to create a new federal strategy, but to build on the existing federal foundation and extend it across society. The discussion draft and updates will be available through NationalDataStrategy.us.