DeepSeek poses national security threat - US demands report from Nvidia on chip shipments
Photo: ties between DeepSeek and Chinese government interests are "significant" (Getty Images)
The company DeepSeek poses a "serious threat" to US national security. The startup may have used Nvidia chips to develop its chatbot, prompting a request for a sales report from the corporation, according to Bloomberg.
The US House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party stated in a report that DeepSeek has “significant” ties to the interests of the Chinese government. Lawmakers said that DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng controls the firm in conjunction with the hedge fund High-Flyer Quant in an “integrated ecosystem” linked to state-run hardware distributors and the Chinese research institute Zhekiang Lab.
“Although it presents itself as just another AI chatbot, offering users a way to generate text and answer questions, closer inspection reveals that the app siphons data back to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), creates security vulnerabilities for its users, and relies on a model that covertly censors and manipulates information pursuant to Chinese law,” the committee said in the report.
According to the committee’s investigation, DeepSeek operates on “tens of thousands of chips,” and the company may have bypassed US export controls when acquiring them. Citing analytics firm SemiAnalysis, lawmakers said DeepSeek possesses at least 60,000 Nvidia processors, with thousands more H20 chips on order.
Committee Chair John Moolenaar and Ranking Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi also requested that Nvidia provide a list of clients in 11 Asian countries who have purchased more than 499 AI chips since 2020. In a letter sent Wednesday, the lawmakers highlighted Malaysia and Singapore, as well as the end-users of those chips. Nvidia must respond by April 30.
On Wednesday, Nvidia said it strictly complies with US export regulations. The California-based company added that in the case of Singapore, its “products are shipped to other locations, including the United States and Taiwan, not to China.”
Background and more on DeepSeek
The committee’s report comes after Nvidia disclosed that it may have to write down up to $5.5 billion this quarter due to new restrictions from the Trump administration on the sale of its H20 chip to China. The chip was originally designed to comply with earlier US export limits.
Citing cybersecurity firm Feroot Security, the committee also reported that Hangzhou-based DeepSeek collects large volumes of user data and transmits it via infrastructure connected to China Mobile, a telecom operator banned from operating in the US since 2019.
The report, which includes testimony from OpenAI, alleges that DeepSeek likely used unlawful distillation methods, where one AI model learns from another’s outputs to replicate its capabilities.
Ban on DeepSeek and more
Bloomberg reported in late January that US authorities had launched an investigation into whether DeepSeek acquired advanced Nvidia semiconductors through third parties in Singapore to evade US restrictions.
On the night of January 31, it was also revealed that the US Congress banned staffers from using the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, citing its use by malicious actors to infect devices.
