Homeland Security orders DeepSeek products out of civilian federal agencies

The notice runs to two pages. The order it announces is not in it.

Filed for public inspection at the Federal Register on Monday and scheduled for publication on Tuesday, a Department of Homeland Security notice says the Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a two-part order on Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd. The first part excludes information technology products and services developed by DeepSeek and its affiliates from federal civilian agency procurement. The second requires civilian agencies to remove all DeepSeek and affiliate products from their systems, along with third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations.

That last clause reaches past the company's own apps. On the notice's wording, a contractor's tool built on a DeepSeek model falls inside it.

The authority is the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018. The notice says the Secretary acted after reviewing a recommendation from the Federal Acquisition Security Council and the evidence that came with it, and it does not describe that evidence. It gives no effective date and no deadline for removal.

The signed order is meant to sit in an appendix and on regulations.gov under docket DHS-2026-0628. In the public inspection copy, the appendix heading is followed by nothing.

Photograph: Saint Elizabeths Hospital Historic District Building during the construction phase of the Department of Homeland Security campus, by Geraldshields11, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped to 16:9; the adapted photograph is available under the same license.