DeepSeek is now banned across U.S. federal civilian agencies. The Department of Homeland Security published notice on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, in the Federal Register of an order that (1) excludes products and services from Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co. and its affiliates from civilian agency purchasing, and (2) removes all DeepSeek products, plus third-party products and services built on DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency IT systems.
CNBC reports DHS made the order public on Monday, citing security concerns, and that it was originally issued on July 24. The Wall Street Journal first reported the move.
Who it covers
- Covered: federal civilian agencies; CNBC names the Treasury, State and Justice departments as examples.
- Not covered by this order: Defense Department and national security systems, which fall to the Secretary of Defense, and intelligence systems, which fall to the Director of National Intelligence, according to the order.
- Also caught: outside vendors' tools that run DeepSeek models to provide services to agencies.
DHS issued the order under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 after reviewing a Federal Acquisition Security Council recommendation. The signed order cites, among other evidence, a February 2025 NowSecure report on security and privacy flaws in DeepSeek's iOS app. Questions go to CISA's FASCSA order implementation team, the notice says.
Why it matters for U.S. AI vendors
The ban narrows the field for open-weight Chinese models inside government at the same time U.S. labs are chasing federal work, including xAI, whose Grok 4.7 just came to AWS GovCloud. DeepSeek itself keeps shipping: see our story on its DeepInfer open-source inference engine.