US orders federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products, including third-party tools built on them

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered federal civilian agencies to stop buying technology from the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek and to take existing DeepSeek products out of their IT systems. The order, issued on Monday 19 October 2026 and published in the Federal Register on 20 October, also reaches "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations". That last phrase is the one developers, vendors and procurement teams will spend the coming weeks arguing about, because the order does not say what "developed using" means.

Key points

• DHS issued the order on 19 October 2026 under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act (FASCSA); the Federal Register notice (Docket No. DHS-2026-0628) is dated 20 October.
• It excludes IT products and services developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd and its affiliates from federal civilian procurement.
• It also requires removal of all DeepSeek and DeepSeek-affiliate products, and of third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency IT.
• TechCrunch reports that agencies can request exceptions; The Register says the wording is vague about AI gateways and derived models.
• China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that it opposes "overstretching the concept of national security", according to TechCrunch.

What happened

The Federal Register notice is short. It says the Secretary of Homeland Security issued an order following review of a recommendation from the Federal Acquisition Security Council and "affiliated evidence", and it sets out two instructions: first, exclude IT products and services developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd, including affiliated entities as defined in 48 CFR 2.101, from federal civilian agency procurements; second, remove all DeepSeek and DeepSeek-affiliate products, and third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency information technology. The legal basis is the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 (41 U.S.C. 1321-1328) and its implementing regulations at 41 CFR 201-1. The notice says the signed order is attached as an appendix and can be found on regulations.gov under docket DHS-2026-0628, and it names the FASCSA Order Implementation Team in the Cybersecurity Division of CISA as the contact point.

The notice itself does not set out DHS's reasoning. TechCrunch, which reports from the order, says DHS cited national security concerns tied to DeepSeek's operations in China and warned that sensitive information from US government users could potentially be accessible to Chinese authorities under Chinese law. We have attributed those concerns to DHS as reported; we have not independently assessed them. TechCrunch also reports that agencies can request exceptions and that the order covers both new purchases and systems already in use.

Reaction came quickly. TechCrunch says Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Tuesday that Beijing opposes "overstretching the concept of national security and politicizing technology and trade issues" and would defend the interests of Chinese enterprises. The Register reported that a DHS spokesperson had not responded to its request for comment at the time of publication.

Background

DeepSeek has been under government scrutiny since its R1 reasoning model arrived in January 2025. Restrictions so far have been piecemeal, according to The Register's account:

• On 6 February 2025, US Representatives Darin LaHood and Josh Gottheimer introduced the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act. The bill never left committee.
• The Defense Information Systems Agency began blocking DeepSeek on Pentagon networks in January 2025, and the US Navy, NASA and the House of Representatives took similar steps, as did various US states.
• TechCrunch adds that a law passed in December 2025 targeted DeepSeek's use in intelligence community national security systems.

The new order extends the restriction to the civilian side of the federal government, which, as far as we can tell from these reports, had not been covered by a single government-wide rule. TechCrunch also notes that a September report accused DeepSeek and five other Chinese AI companies, including Alibaba and Moonshot AI, of large-scale model distillation (training a model on another model's outputs), and that OpenAI and Anthropic have separately raised distillation concerns about DeepSeek. Those are allegations reported by the outlet; we make no finding on them here.

DeepSeek is also in the news for a different reason this week: it has just put out its inference framework as open source, which we cover in a separate article, and its latest open-weight model, V4.1-Flash-1017, was published under an MIT licence days ago. The order concerns procurement and federal IT; it does not stop anyone outside those systems from downloading the weights.

How the order is built

It helps to separate the order's two parts, because they have different practical weight.

Procurement exclusion. Under FASCSA, an exclusion order tells agencies not to buy covered products or services. For a vendor selling to civilian agencies, this is the straightforward part: DeepSeek's own app and API are off the table, and so are anything sold by DeepSeek affiliates.

Removal. The second instruction applies to what is already installed or in use, and it is the broader one because of the "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations" clause. The Register's reading is that this is hard to comply with, because it is not clear which third-party products were developed using DeepSeek's technology, nor whether "developed using" means a product that calls DeepSeek models through an API or merely an app written with help from DeepSeek.

What it means

For federal agencies and their contractors. The immediate job is inventory. Teams will need to find direct uses of DeepSeek's app and API, and then ask suppliers whether their products embed or call DeepSeek models. The Register quotes Katie Moussouris of Luta Security saying the order "doesn't say what 'developed using' means", and that an AI software bill of materials would not record which tools developers used, so every vendor would in effect have to attest that nothing it relies on ever touched DeepSeek. That is her assessment, not DHS's.

For anyone using AI gateways. The Register points out that services such as OpenRouter and Vercel AI Gateway make DeepSeek models available through one API and, by default, route requests to what they judge the best provider. An agency using a gateway without restricting providers could therefore end up using DeepSeek models without meaning to. The practical fix, if you build for the federal market, is to pin providers and models explicitly and log which model actually served each request.

For open-weight models. Moussouris argues in The Register that banning DeepSeek's own app and API is workable, but that applying the rules to US-hosted copies of its models goes too far, because the cited risks are mostly about data flowing to servers in China, and US hosting avoids most of them. She also notes that NIST has found DeepSeek more vulnerable to prompt injection and easier to jailbreak than US models, while pointing out that every model has those problems. The Register separately suggests the timing could help US AI companies that face competition from cheap open-weight models from China. That is the outlet's commentary rather than an established effect.

For developers outside government. Nothing in the notice restricts private use. But if you sell software to US federal civilian agencies, expect questionnaires. Keep a record of which models your product calls, which it ships, and which tools you used to build it, even if the last category is the one the order's wording leaves least clear.

What we don't know yet

• What "developed using" covers. Whether it includes models fine-tuned from DeepSeek weights, software written with DeepSeek assistance, or services that call DeepSeek only through an intermediary is not defined in the Federal Register notice, and DHS had not commented when The Register published.
• The reasoning in the appendix. We have read the notice but not the full signed order; the reasons summarised above come from TechCrunch's reading of it.
• How exceptions will work. TechCrunch says agencies can request them; we have not seen the process or the deadlines for removal.
• Whether US-hosted open-weight copies are in scope. This is Moussouris's central objection and, as far as we can tell, an open question.

What to watch next

Watch for DHS or CISA implementation guidance from the FASCSA Order Implementation Team, for any definition of "developed using", and for gateway providers and cloud vendors saying how they will let federal customers exclude DeepSeek models. Also watch for Chinese countermeasures: TechCrunch notes Bloomberg reported last week that China is considering export restrictions on 23 AI-related technologies, including chip designs and certain advanced AI models.

Sources

• Federal Register public inspection: Notice of Order Regarding Exclusion and Removal of DeepSeek Products (Docket DHS-2026-0628), Department of Homeland Security
• DeepSeek deep-sixed at all US federal civilian agencies, The Register, 20 October 2026
• US orders federal agencies to remove China's DeepSeek AI from their systems, TechCrunch, 20 October 2026