US orders DeepSeek purge from federal systems as Chinese AI rival opens its technology to the world

The US government ordered federal agencies to remove DeepSeek technology and extended restrictions to third-party products built using its AI models.

On Oct. 20, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published the directive, requiring federal civilian agencies to eliminate the Chinese company's products from their information technology systems and prohibiting future purchases.

The restrictions also cover software and services developed by other companies using DeepSeek implementations, potentially affecting American technology contractors that have incorporated its models into their products.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin originally signed the order on July 24, under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018. Agencies were required to begin complying immediately, with a 60-day window to request exceptions.

DHS cited national security concerns about DeepSeek's Chinese operations, including the possibility that government employees could enter sensitive information that could be transmitted to servers in China.

The department also warned that the company's technology could contain security vulnerabilities and that information collected through its services could provide intelligence on American government activities.

The restrictions expand Washington's efforts to limit Chinese technology in government infrastructure, following earlier actions against DeepSeek by the Commerce Department, the US Navy, and several state governments.

China condemned the decision, accusing Washington of politicizing technology and undermining commercial cooperation between the world's two largest economies.

The order creates new compliance obligations for federal technology suppliers, which must assess whether products incorporating DeepSeek implementations can continue serving government customers. Affected contractors may need to replace those components or seek exemptions, potentially benefiting competing AI providers.

Against that backdrop, DeepSeek announced on Oct. 20 that it had open-sourced DeepInfer, the inference framework powering its large-scale artificial intelligence services, giving developers access to technology previously used internally to operate its models.

The release includes optimized computing kernels, distributed inference capabilities, speculative decoding, and processing tools designed to improve throughput and reduce the computing resources required to generate AI responses.

DeepSeek also released deepseek-recipe, a collection of software components that handle token encoding, prompt formatting, and API request processing. The tools let independent developers reproduce key elements of the company's API behavior when running its models.