Chinese AI firm DeepSeek is sharing user information and statistics with Beijing’s surveillance apparatus, a senior US official has alleged in an interview with Reuters.
The explosive accusation was part of broader claim that the firm — which sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley with its cheap, open-source AI model — was aiding China’s military and intelligence operations.
Chinese law requires companies operating in China to provide data to the government when requested. But the suggestion that DeepSeek is already doing so is likely to raise privacy and other concerns for the firm’s tens of millions of daily global users.
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US lawmakers have previously said that DeepSeek, based on its privacy disclosure statements, transmits American users’ data to China through “backend infrastructure” connected to China Mobile, a Chinese state-owned telecommunications giant.
In the interview with Reuters, a senior State Department official also shared the US government’s assessment of DeepSeek’s activities and links to the Chinese government.
“We understand that DeepSeek has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China’s military and intelligence operations,” a senior State Department official told Reuters in an interview.
“This effort goes above and beyond open-source access to DeepSeek’s AI models,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak about US government information.
This have not been previously reported and come amid a wide-scale US-China trade war.
The company is also referenced more than 150 times in procurement records for China’s People’s Liberation Army and other entities affiliated with the Chinese defense industrial base, said the official, adding that DeepSeek had provided technology services to PLA research institutions.
Access to cache of Nvidia chips
The official also said DeepSeek was employing workarounds to US export controls to gain access to advanced US-made chips.
The US conclusions reflect a growing skepticism in Washington that the capabilities behind the rapid rise of one of China’s flagship AI enterprises may have been exaggerated and relied heavily on US technology. Hangzhou-based DeepSeek previously claimed its AI reasoning models were on par with or better than US industry-leading models at a fraction of the cost.
But DeepSeek has access to “large volumes” of US firm Nvidia’s high-end H100 chips, the US official said. Since 2022 those chips have been under US export restrictions due to Washington’s concerns that China could use them to advance its military capabilities or jump ahead in the AI race.
“DeepSeek sought to use shell companies in Southeast Asia to evade export controls, and DeepSeek is seeking to access data centres in Southeast Asia to remotely access US chips,” the official said.
The official declined to say if DeepSeek had successfully evaded export controls or offer further details about the shell companies.
When asked if the US would implement further export controls or sanctions against DeepSeek, the official said the department had “nothing to announce at this time.”
Meanwhile, Nvidia told Reuters it was now essentially “out of the China data centre market” under the current regime of export controls. The market is now “served only by competitors such as Huawei,” the firm said.
An Nvidia spokesman also said that “the company’s review indicates “that DeepSeek used lawfully acquired H800 products, not H100.”
Nvidia introduced the H800 chip, specifically for its Chinese consumers, shortly after US export controls were announced in 2022. The former Joe Biden administration clamped down on its exports to China nearly a year later.
- Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena
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