
Taiwan announced on March 31 (local time) that it will ban Chinese AI services in public institutions. Countries around the world, including Italy, which already regulated Deepseek, and Japan, the Netherlands, the U.K., Germany and France, which are considering regulations, are issuing Deepseek watches one after another.
According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, Taiwan’s digital ministry explained the reason for the ban in a statement on the same day, saying, “Deepseek could jeopardize national security in terms of information leakage and security.” The measure applies not only to government departments, but also to public schools, state-owned enterprises, and various government-owned foundations.

The anti-China ruling Democratic Progressive Party believes that the Deepseek regulation should speed up regulations on Chinese social media such as TikTok. “Taiwan is the region most exposed to China’s military and cyber security risks,” said Wang Ding-yu, a lawmaker of the Democratic Progressive Party. “We urgently need measures.”
According to Japan’s public NHK Broadcasting Corporation, Digital Award Daira Masaki also recommended on the 1st that government officials should refrain from using Deepseek until concerns about data protection are resolved. He also said he would ask ministries to pay attention to the use of Deepseek.
Italy has banned new downloads of its DeepSeek application for the first time in the world since April 29. The U.S. Navy also banned the use of DeepSeek on April 24. The U.K., Germany, France and the Netherlands are also reportedly considering regulatory measures.
According to the Texas state government on the 2nd (local time), Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, recently issued an order to ban DeepSeek, China’s version of Instagram Xiaohongsu (name Rednote), and China’s ByteDance’s TikTok sister app Lemon 8 from state-funded devices. Governor Abbott said, “Texas will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our state’s important infrastructure through data collection AI and social media apps,” adding, “State agencies and employees handling important infrastructure, intellectual property, and personal information should be protected from malicious espionage by the Chinese Communist Party.”
CNBC, a U.S. economic media outlet, reported on the 28th of last month that the U.S. Navy has banned all Navy personnel from using the DeepSeek AI app, saying there are “potential security and ethical concerns about the source and use of the model.” In the U.S., there has not been a federal government ban yet, but experts are voicing the need for national control. Duwardrick McNeil, a senior policy analyst at the corporate consulting firm Longview Global, told CNBC that the amount of data and information that China’s malicious forces can collect from DeepSeek is 20 times the amount that Google searches can collect.
McNeil said there is a clear risk that personal financial or health information could be leaked, adding that prominent cyber security companies are already pointing out vulnerabilities when using Deepseek. In fact, Deepseek said it was under a massive cyberattack on July 27.
However, China’s state media reported that the cyberattacks targeting Deepseek originated in the U.S. Matt Pearl, director of strategic technology programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “ Deepseek ‘s own privacy policy is worthless,” adding that any information entered by users can be tracked in the app subject to Chinese law.
He also pointed out that malware (malicious software) can be planted on a user’s device through the DeepSeek app, which can cause massive cybersecurity problems. “In theory, just one update of the app can lead to malware infiltration.” The New York Times commented that DeepSeek provides answers that reflect the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party on sensitive agendas such as remarks by major U.S. politicians on China and the authorities’ crackdown on human rights in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. DeepSeek has already drawn controversy by avoiding or biasedly answering Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests in 1989.
JEENIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL