DeepSeek Success Could Spark Renewed Push for TikTok Ban

The Chinese AI app DeepSeek has created a splash in the artificial intelligence world not seen since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT. All the attention garnered by the AI model, however, could pose a threat to its success in the United States, as other technology companies based in countries Uncle Sam considers “adversary states” have discovered.

Although the app is barely out of the starting gate, questions have been raised about it as a threat to national security. Those are the kinds of questions that have sunk U.S. sales of companies like Kaspersky and Huawei and threaten the popular social media app TikTok.

“[T]he U.S. cannot allow CCP [Chinese Communist Party] models such as DeepSeek to risk our national security and leverage our technology to advance their AI ambitions. We must work to swiftly place stronger export controls on technologies critical to DeepSeek’s AI infrastructure,” Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., chairman of the Select Committee on China, told NBC News Monday.

DeepSeek exploded on the scene over the weekend when it became the top download at Apple’s App Store in the United States, vaulting AI stalwart ChatGPT. The Chinese app has also been garnering kudos for its speed, efficiency, and mighty reasoning skills.

What’s more, it runs on less powerful chips than its U.S. competitors. According to DeepSeek, those chips allow it to train its model for less than US$6 million — a fraction of what Google, OpenAI, and Meta are spending to train their models with top-of-the-line processors.

If DeepSeek’s claims about its technology pass scrutiny, it could dramatically impact the AI industry. There could be less demand for high-octane chipsets, power requirements could be curtailed, and there would be less need for more large-scale data centers, such as those to be built by the Trump administration’s $500 billion Stargate project.

“DeepSeek does force a question about the costs and investments needed to race to AGI outcomes and innovations,” said Jeff Le, a former California deputy cabinet secretary.

“This race is also focused on time but there are energy and infrastructure consequences, especially if there is validation that would force others to relook the recently-announced Stargate project,” he told TechNewsWorld.

National Security Risks

Then there’s that national security thing that has tripped up companies like Huawei, Kaspersky, and, most recently, TikTok.

In 2018, Huawei was a high-flying smartphone and telecommunications maker. It temporarily pushed Apple to third place in the global smartphone market. However, Huawei smartphones were banned from being sold in the United States due to national security concerns, and its market share never recovered.

In 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security prohibited Kaspersky Lab from directly or indirectly providing antivirus software and cybersecurity products or services in the United States or to U.S. persons.

The bureau found that the company’s continued operations in the United States presented a national security risk — due to the Russian government’s offensive cyber capabilities and capacity to influence or direct Kaspersky’s operations.

Then there’s TikTok, which Washington wants out of Chinese hands for fear its owner, ByteDance, could potentially collect and share sensitive data from American users with the Chinese government.

DeepSeek could pose a greater threat to national security than TikTok, maintained Allie Mellen, a senior analyst with Forrester, a national market research company headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. She pointed out that DeepSeek’s privacy policy explicitly states it can collect “your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content” and use it for training purposes.

“It also states it can share this information with law enforcement agencies, public authorities, and so forth at its discretion, and that any information collected is stored in China,” she told TechNewsWorld.

“In addition,” she continued, “the information being submitted into DeepSeek is more wide-ranging. Some are submitting voice recordings, pictures, personal information, and enterprise data and IP into the tool.”

Portal for Data Leakage

Rich Vibert, CEO of Metomic, a data privacy and security software company in London, asserted that the likelihood of the U.S. government banning DeepSeek hinges on whether its capabilities are perceived as a national security threat.

“If the tool demonstrates a potential for large-scale exploitation of vulnerabilities or potential to leak sensitive data, it’s plausible that regulatory or security agencies might act to restrict its use,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Such vulnerabilities were reported Monday by Kela, an Israeli threat intelligence company. “Kela’s AI Red Team was able to jailbreak the [DeepSeek] model across a wide range of scenarios, enabling it to generate malicious outputs, such as ransomware development, fabrication of sensitive content, and detailed instructions for creating toxins and explosive devices,” the company reported in a blog.

“As AI technologies like DeepSeek become increasingly advanced, the risks of failing to secure sensitive data grow exponentially,” Vibert said.

He noted that while both DeepSeek and TikTok raise concerns about data security, their risks are distinct. “Concerns around TikTok focus on the scale of data collection, with fears around where and how that data is stored,” he explained. “DeepSeek, however, represents a more targeted risk, as it appears to be designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities on a massive scale.”

DeepSeek extends national security concerns beyond the consumer privacy issues of TikTok, contended Gal Ringel, co-founder and CEO of MineOS, a data governance platform based in Tel Aviv, Israel. “It expands to the potential exposure of proprietary business information, trade secrets, and strategic corporate information,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“Just as TikTok raised red flags about personal data exposure, DeepSeek’s AI tools apply the same rules of risk to sensitive corporate information,” he said. “Organizations must now urgently audit and track their AI assets to prevent potential data exposure to China.”

“This isn’t just about knowing what AI tools are being used,” Ringel continued. “It’s about understanding where company data flows and ensuring robust safeguards are in place so it doesn’t inadvertently end up in the wrong hands.”

“The parallels to TikTok are striking, but the stakes may be even higher when considering the potential exposure of business data ending up in adversarial hands,” he added.

Protectionist Camouflage

National security concerns could also be used to camouflage protectionist policies, the way Apple was protected from Huawei and today’s social media outfits are being protected from TikTok.

“Trump is totally unpredictable, so we don’t know what’s going to happen in terms of a ban,” said Greg Sterling, co-founder of Near Media, a market research firm in San Francisco.

“I think it’s somewhat premature to speculate, but DeepSeek’s storage of U.S. data on Chinese servers with full access by the Chinese government makes it at least the security risk that TikTok is,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“The same logic being applied here would theoretically apply to any Chinese app,” he added. “So, the government must decide what the general policy is. The EU won’t let EU citizen’s data go to U.S. servers. The U.S. could take a similar position with Chinese apps and completely ban those that pose the most significant risks.”