Australia Bans China’s DeepSeek On Government Devices

China-based AI start-up DeepSeek is starting to face a growing number of countries and territories that have announced national security bans, while other countries also mull a ban on the app.

This week Australia’s Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs has reportedly determined that DeepSeek poses “an unacceptable risk to the Australian Government’s technology estate, and has issued a mandatory direction to prevent its access, use or installation on all Australian Government devices.”

As a result, Australia’s home affairs department secretary signed a directive on Tuesday banning the program from all federal government systems and devices on national security grounds.

Meanwhile in a separate development, the government of South Australia also announced a DeepSeek ban on its government devices.

China’s DeepSeek

The arrival of DeepSeek had shocked the world last month when it rose to the top of app store download charts in the US and other countries.

What had stunned the world was that DeepSeek’s chatbot matched the performance level of US rivals, but was developed for a fraction of the cost, sending world markets into a $1 trillion (£810bn) rout.

DeepSeek is based in Hangzhou, in eastern China, which is also the headquarters of tech giant Alibaba.

Earlier this week it was revealed that some European start-ups are already adopting low-cost DeepSeek AI models.

Countries where DeepSeek is banned

But DeepSeek has already been banned in a number of countries over national security concerns.

Earlier this week Italy’s data protection regulator opened a probe into DeepSeek, and ordered it to stop processing Italian users’ data and asked the Italian government to block the app in the country.

It also asked what data was used to train DeepSeek’s AI models and, if personal data was scraped from the internet, how the people to whom that data pertains are informed about the processing of their data.

DeepSeek is also already banned by government agencies in Taiwan due to alleged security risks.

The country’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said “DeepSeek AI service is a Chinese product. Its operation involves cross-border transmission, and information leakage and other information security concerns.”

Also this week the US state of Texas banned DeepSeek from government-issued devices, along with other popular Chinese apps, such as Lemon8 and RedNote and stock-trading apps Moomoo, Tiger Brokers and Webull.

In doing so, Texas became the first US state to ban DeepSeek.

Countries considering DeepSeek ban

But a host of other countries are also considering the national security angle of DeepSeek.

The White House said last week that US officials were investigating the national security implications of DeepSeek.

Meanwhile some federal US agencies have already moved to block the app, including the US Navy which has told users not to use the Chinese model.

Meanwhile Republican Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would prohibit people in the US from using the app, or interacting with other artificial intelligence technologies built in China – or else face jail time and a fine of up to $1 million.

Besides the United States, data protection authorities in Belgium, France and Ireland are all investigating the way DeepSeek handles the personal information of its citizens, hinting that a ban may be possible in those countries in the weeks and months ahead.

South Korea and India have also signalled that action may be taken against DeepSeek due to potential privacy and security infringements.

And data protection authorities in the Netherlands said separately last Friday that they were launching an investigation into DeepSeek’s privacy practices, saying it had “serious concerns”.