In case you missed it, U.S. Defense Department employees connected their work computers to Chinese servers to access DeepSeek’s new AI chatbot, sparking concerns over national security risks regarding China.
These Pentagon employees spent two days on the new Chinese chatbot before the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) shut off access late Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. DISA is essentially the U.S. Department of Defense’s IT department. It maintains and secures communications capabilities “from the battlefield to the White House.”
US Defense Department employees connected their work computers to Chinese servers to access DeepSeek’s new AI chatbot for at least two days before the Pentagon moved to shut off access https://t.co/M0QON8thWJ
— Bloomberg Technology (@technology) January 30, 2025
DeepSeek became a global phenomenon over the weekend when the chatbot went live in U.S. app stores, quickly becoming the top free app in the Apple App Store. Because of this, Americans watched as tech stocks lost billions on Monday due to its arrival, creating even greater fears that China has already leapfrogged U.S. dominance in AI development. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
However, there is an even more sinister issue here. DeepSeek’s privacy policy admits that the AI chatbot not only stores user data on servers in China but also controls that information under Chinese law. It doesn’t take a Silicon Valley elite to understand the national security risks at play when Defense Department employees connect their government computers to China’s new tech.
Open an investigation immediately.
Not a joke. https://t.co/lBELkaeRQL
— joshua steinman (🇺🇸,🇺🇸) (@JoshuaSteinman) January 31, 2025
If the federal government, which bloviates about security issues regarding TikTok, truly believed that there is a grave national security issue regarding China. Why wasn’t protection already in place to prevent this from happening? To make matters worse, Bloomberg reported that this wasn’t a one-time occurrence lasting two days. Federal employees have been accessing DeepSeek for months. (ROOKE: Nation’s Report Card Just Came Out Revealing Shocking Truth Parents Need To Know)
“US military personnel started downloading an earlier release of DeepSeek code on their workstations in the fall of 2024, according to the person familiar with the matter. At the time, the downloads didn’t raise concern with Defense Department security teams as the connection to China wasn’t clear to them, the person added,” the outlet reported.
> Discovery and acknowledgement of Chinese malware designed to kneecap US critical infrastructure in case of warhttps://t.co/C70NrukMLI pic.twitter.com/wIv4Q6KUC2
— joshua steinman (🇺🇸,🇺🇸) (@JoshuaSteinman) July 29, 2023
Currently, the U.S. is in a digital arms race over who will dominate the AI space. It is critical to all facets of our national security to come out the winner. During an interview with Tucker Carlson, Silicon Valley engineer and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya discussed the importance of America’s AI dominance.
Palihapitiya warned that if the U.S. does not become a country of technological supremacy, America will be at “an existential risk of losing our place in the world.”
“We are the single most important country in existence in the world. We are the most important country today. We must be the most important country tomorrow,” Palihapitiya said. (Trump’s Crackdown On Violent Illegal Immigrants First Used By Democrats’ Favorite President)
“There are two things that underpin that. We are the single most vibrant economy in the world, and we are the single strongest military in the world,” he continued. “And there is only one thing that gives you both of those two things, which is technological supremacy.”
Chamath Palihapitiya on the emptiness of Silicon Valley, the future of technology and the promise of the new Trump Administration.
(0:00) The War Machine Takeover
(3:22) Chamath’s Dark Passenger
(19:47) The Emptiness of Silicon Valley Elites
(27:06) Is the US at Risk of Losing… pic.twitter.com/6ZigbHGMCG— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 23, 2025
Doesn’t allowing federal employees access to Chinese technology fly in the face of protecting our national security and winning the race to technological supremacy? There should be an inherent warning signal that explodes in the minds of anyone who works in government that using Chinese apps (no matter the offered service) is a terrible idea.
“Danger Will Robinson. Danger Will Robinson. You are about to give our data to one of our adversaries!”
“The Chinese have already insinuated malware into critical American infrastructure— like what?” – @60Minutes
Water treatment plants. Transportation systems. The electric grid. Natural gas pipelines. Our telecommunications systems. — @FBI pic.twitter.com/uSwZN5pIHf
— Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (@committeeonccp) January 13, 2025
President Donald Trump has been in office merely days, but the national security risks left to him to fix by the Biden Administration are already being exposed. What do they mean by “the connection to China wasn’t clear to” Biden officials? It has never been hidden that DeepSeek was created in China. All it took was a quick search of its origins to discover that one of our national enemies controlled the app.
Americans have no idea which U.S. Military or Pentagon personnel accessed DeepSeek or their security levels.
The best-case scenario is that they were low-level employees with little to no clearance. At worst, high-ranking officials just gave China months to snoop around in our systems.
Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here! Follow Mary Rooke on X: @MaryRooke_
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com