Australia Bans DeepSeek In Government Networks

Uploaded on 2025-02-07 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

Australia has banned DeepSeek from all their government systems because of what it says is the national security risk the Chinese Artificial Intelligence (AI) DeepSeek poses. DeepSeek surprised many organisations in January when it launched a chatbot which matched the performance level of US rivals, saying it had a significantly lower training cost.

Australia follows Italy and Taiwan in imposing a block on the service while Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has requested further details on its operations.

Numerous private companies have also pre-emptively restricted access to the AI platform, although the Australian ban does not include private citizens' devices

Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the ban, stating all DeepSeek products, applications and services would be immediately removed from the government networks. “AI holds immense potential, but we will not hesitate to act when security threats are identified,” he said. Burke added that the decision was based on the risk assessment rather than the company’s Chinese origins, stating that Australia’s approach remained “country-agnostic.”

The Australian government has said the ban is not due to the app's Chinese origins, but because of the "unacceptable risk" it poses to national security.

The US technology industry has been badly shaken by the introduction of DeepSeek, with billions of dollars were wiped off stock markets internationally, including in Australia, where stocks tied to AI dropped sharply.

Australia's move specifically requires any government entities to "prevent the use or installation of DeepSeek products, applications and web services", as well as remove any previously installed, on any government system or device it says. That means a wide range of workers will not be able to use the tools in the country, including those working in such varied areas as the Australia Electoral Commission and Bureau of Meteorology.

It is presently unclear whether it means DeepSeek would be banned from public sector computers in different areas of the economy, such as schools.

Western countries have a track record of being suspicious of Chinese technology - notably telecoms firm Huawei and the social media platform, TikTok - both of which have been restricted on national security grounds. The initial reaction to DeepSeek, which quickly became the most downloaded free app in the UK and US, appeared to be different.

Regulators in South Korea, Ireland and France have all begun investigations into how DeepSeek handles user data, which it stores in servers in China.

Generally, AI tools will analyse the prompts sent to them to improve their product, and this is true of apps such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini as much as it is DeepSeek. All of them gather and keep information, including email addresses and dates of birth.

However, security experts have previously warned that anyone working on confidential or national security areas needs to be aware of the risk of whatever they enter into chatbots being kept and analysed by the developers of those tools.

DeepSeek also faces accusations that it has used US Technology 'unfairly' and has attracted widespread scrutiny over data security, with the US government launching a probe into the technology to investigate concerns over security and data sovereignty.

Image: Matheus Bertelli

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