New York state banned AI startup DeepSeek from government devices and networks due to “serious concerns” over potential data privacy and censorship risks posed by the China-based app, Gov. Kathy Hochul confirmed Monday.
Hochul’s office cited fears about “foreign government surveillance and censorship, including how DeepSeek can be used to harvest user data and steal technology secrets.”
“Public safety is my top priority and we’re working aggressively to protect New Yorkers from foreign and domestic threats,” Hochul said in a statement.
“New York will continue fighting to combat cyber threats, ensure the privacy and safety of our data, and safeguard against state-sponsored censorship.”
DeepSeek surged to the top of app store download charts last month after the firm claimed to have trained an advanced AI model for less than $6 million – and without access to the most advanced Nvidia computer chips, which were generally thought necessary to build cutting-edge AI and are subject to US export controls.
The chatbot’s popularity spiked even as cyber experts warned it poses glaring national security risks by mass-collecting data such as IP addresses and keystroke patterns and storing them all on servers in China, where the Communist regime could access the data.
The ban means that New York state employees will be unable to download DeepSeek on their government-issued devices. It doesn’t apply to their personal devices.
DeepSeek could not immediately be reached for comment.
The startup has displayed disturbing signs of censorship in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s mandates – such as refusing to answer questions about China’s leader Xi Jinping, the Tiananmen Square massacre and whether Taiwan is a sovereign country.
Similar data security concerns led state and federal lawmakers to crack down on China-owned TikTok, which was banned last month after its Chinese parent ByteDance failed to divest its stake. President Trump issued an executive order delaying enforcement of the ban by 75 days.
TikTok has been banned on government devices in New York since 2020.
Some US lawmakers are pushing to ban DeepSeek from federal government devices, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The US Navy has already banned the use of DeepSeek.
DeepSeek’s claims about developing an ultra-efficient model despite US restrictions helped trigger a $1 trillion stock market selloff.
However, many experts, including Elon Musk and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, have said that DeepSeek likely has far more chips than it can publicly admit to because of export controls.
As The Post exclusively reported, DeepSeek also hired at least four current employees who previously worked at Microsoft’s controversial AI lab in China – the existence of which US lawmakers have repeatedly criticized as a potential national security threat.
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