Pentagon Employees Connected To Chinese DeepSeek Servers For Days Before Block

Several 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 shut off access, according to Bloomberg, citing a defense official familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency moved to block the Chinese startup’s website late Tuesday after defense officials raised concerns over Pentagon workers using the tool. According to DeepSeek’s privacy policy, it stores user data on servers in China, and governs that information under Chinese law.

That said, while some Pentagon work screens showed a “website blocked” message, citing operational concerns, others could still access DeepSeek, according to the defense official and correspondence reviewed by Bloomberg.

The Pentagon’s IT experts are still determining the extent to which employees directly used DeepSeek’s system through a web browser, the official said.

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. -Bloomberg

DeepSeek and its AI model they claim to have developed for less than $6 million rattle markets earlier this week, after their model raised questions about hundreds of billions of dollars that major US tech companies are spending on AI infrastructure. That said, a deeper analysis showed that DeepSeek is only 17% accurate, and hallucinates a lot. Then again, the deep state’s favorite censorship outlet NewsGuard was the one that came up with that analysis, so who actually knows.

According to the report, the DeepSeek phenomenon has triggered efforts throughout the military to find and remove code from China-origin chatbots on employees’ individual machines, however thousands of DoD personnel appear to be using DeepSeek through Ask Sage – an authorized software platform that doesn’t connect to Chinese servers, according to Nicolas Chaillan, founder and CEO of the platform.

On Friday, the Navy prohibited any use of DeepSeek over potential security and ethics concerns associated with the model’s origin and usage, CNBC reported. According to Navy spokeswoman Lieutenant Commander Lauren Chatmas, the Navy already has guidance against the use of open source AI systems for official work, while recent internal Navy correspondence named DeepSeek in connection with that guidance.

The Air Force, meanwhile, hasn’t issued any specific guidance on DeepSeek, but has a longstanding prohibition on the use of commercial generative AI systems in conjunction with sensitive information, according to spokeswoman Laura McAndrews.

The Army issued guidance in June of 2024 warning of “unique challenges in terms of data privacy, security and control over the generated content,” which urges individual commands to develop appropriate governance processes. That said, it has not banned generative AI tools outright.