Seven Republican US senators have called for an investigation into DeepSeek’s data security threats, citing growing concerns that the artificial intelligence (AI) model could leak personal data or generate harmful content.
In a letter submitted to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the lawmakers urged the government to evaluate the risks of Chinese AI models collecting and sending data to servers in China.
After DeepSeek released its R1 model in late January, Wiz Research found a publicly accessible database belonging to the Chinese AI model. It said the database contained a significant volume of chat history, backend data and sensitive information, including log streams, API Secrets and operational details.
The senators also said that R1 probably did not undergo comprehensive red-teaming and safety tests to prevent the generation of harmful content.
“A Wall Street Journal reporter was able to get R1 to write text for a social media campaign intended to encourage self-harm amongst teenage girls, as well as to provide instructions for carrying out a bioweapon attack,” they said.
They requested the US Commerce Department to:
- explaining how it will use resources like the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) to work with relevant agencies to protect US businesses and citizens;
- investigate the national security risks posed by Chinese open-source AI models;
- Identify any evidence of these models providing US data to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or associated companies.
DeepSeek’s military use
In March, Chinese media reported that the PLA was using DeepSeek in its hospitals, the People’s Armed Police (PAP), and national defense mobilization units.
Ren Hao, a senior software engineer at 301 Hospital, stated that the hospital deployed DeepSeek-R1 on Huawei’s Ascend hardware to create a local knowledge database. The PLA’s Central Theatre Command General Hospital also said it used DeepSeek’s R1-70B AI model to assist doctors by suggesting treatment plans.
Apart from these, Chinese academics said the home-made large language model (LLM) can be deployed for military use.
Fu Yanfang, a researcher at Xian Technological University’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, said in May that her team used DeepSeek’s AI models to generate military simulation scenarios.
She said a commander has to spend 48 hours planning for a military scenario, but a self-developed AI-based simulator can generate 10,000 military scenarios in just 48 seconds.
“LLMs and combat simulation scenarios had redefined the future of war design,” she said, adding that DeepSeek’s LLM can easily deconstruct and reconstruct complex battlefield situations through training on massive data sets.
A white paper published by Chongqing Landship Information Technology, an autonomous driving solution provider, also said that DeepSeek has excellent potential for military use, particularly in command, communications, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) applications.
“China can deploy DeepSeek V3 in Gongji-11 drones to fight against F-16V fighter jets in the Taiwan Strait,” Wen Chang, a senior researcher at Techxcope, a Beijing-based think tank, says in an article published in March.
“This would be a fairer game than deploying China’s sixth-generation (Chengdu J-36) or fifth-generation (Chengdu J-20) fighter jets to combat the F-16V, which is not a stealth fighter.”
“Although the F-16V also has an AI system, it still needs the pilot to make most decisions. In this sense, Gongji-11 has an advantage as it can fly 24 hours a day,” he added.
On February 6, two US representatives, Democrat Josh Gottheimer and Republican Darin LaHood, introduced the bipartisan “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” which prohibits federal employees from using DeepSeek on government-issued devices.
Only New York, Texas, and Virginia have banned DeepSeek on government devices. The US Navy has also prohibited the use of the AI model.
In March, Reuters reported that the US Commerce Department’s bureaus informed their staff members that DeepSeek is banned on their government devices.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration would seek to ban the deployment of DeepSeek entirely in the US. US President Donald Trump said on February 8 that the release of DeepSeek may be beneficial for the US, as AI technologies will be significantly less expensive than initially thought.
Nvidia’s high-end chips
The seven senators requested that Lutnick report any findings on how Chinese AI models may have illegally accessed US technology, such as export-controlled semiconductors.
The US banned the shipments of the A100 and H100 to China in October 2022 and the A800 and H100 to the country in October 2023.
In late January, Lutnick testified before the US Senate in a hearing that DeepSeek could create its AI models “dirt cheap” because it was able to purchase a large quantity of Nvidia chips and access data from Meta’s open platform.
DeepSeek claimed that the training cost of R1 was only US$5.58 million, which is 1.1% of Meta’s US$500 million for Llama 3.1. It claimed it trained the model using the distilled data from Alibaba’s Qwen and Meta’s Llama.
Alexandr Wang, chief executive of the US-based Scale AI, told CNBC that DeepSeek and its parent, High Flyer, could have accumulated 50,000 units of Nvidia’s high-end AI chips, such as the H100.
An unnamed senior State Department official told Reuters in late June that DeepSeek used Southeast Asian shell companies to obtain high-end Nvidia chips.
In February, Singapore charged three men with fraud for allegedly helping ship Nvidia’s high-end chips to DeepSeek in China in 2024. The trio, including two Singaporeans and one Chinese national, was accused of shipping servers with the A100 and H100 to Malaysia and potentially elsewhere.
In late March, Malaysia’s Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, said the US had requested the Malaysian government to monitor every shipment of Nvidia chips arriving in Malaysia. On July 14, Malaysia announced that companies must apply for permits to re-export high-performance American AI chips.
On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said two Chinese nationals, both 28, have been arrested in California for violating the US Export Control Reform Act as they exported from the US to China sensitive technology, including graphic processing units (GPUs) – specialized computer parts used for modern computing – without first obtaining the required license or authorization from the US.
Read: US plans to tighten AI chip export rules for Malaysia, Thailand
