Young, Budd Urge Commerce Department to Probe DeepSeek AI’s Connections to China
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.) recently sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urging a probe into allegations made by U.S. officials that DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence (AI) has provided support to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) military and intelligence operations. The letter requests that the Department of Commerce investigate these allegations and thoroughly review threats posed by other Chinese open-source models that may be feeding information back to servers with ties to the Chinese government.
In the letter to Secretary Lutnick, the Senators wrote:
“We write to you regarding concerning security vulnerabilities and the potential compromising of American personal and enterprise data through the use of DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence (AI) reasoning models. Recent reporting states that U.S. officials believe that DeepSeek “has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China’s military and intelligence operations.” The article further states that U.S. officials allege that DeepSeek is sharing user information and statistics with Beijing’s surveillance apparatus.
“These allegations are deeply troubling. DeepSeek’s R1’s model release in late January demonstrated the aptitude of People’s Republic of China (PRC) national AI talent and the progress their home-grown models have made relative to leading U.S. products. The Trump Administration has rightly emphasized winning the AI competition against the PRC, and the development of AI use case applications for businesses and consumers is an important facet of that competition. Ensuring that such applications are secure and not prone to leaking secure information and malign exploitation is paramount […]
“The U.S. government has previously recognized the threats posed by the wide-spread adoption of certain PRC technologies. For example, Congress funded a multi-billion program to remove Huawei telecommunications hardware from American networks after it was determined that such hardware could contain backdoors for PRC espionage.”
The letter requests that the Commerce Department evaluate potential backdoors or vulnerabilities posed by Chinese open-source models, such as DeepSeek’s R1, and provide a briefing to Congress regarding any relevant findings. The letter also asks the Department to elaborate on its plans to focus on cybersecurity and data protection as part of the work of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), and review how AI models may be circumventing export controls on semiconductors.
In addition to Senators Young and Budd, Senators Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), John Husted (R-Ohio), and John Curtis (R-Utah) also signed the letter.
Full text of the letter is available here.