DHS Orders Civilian Federal Agencies to Remove DeepSeek Products, Including Third-Party Tools Built on Its Models

A binding, government-wide procurement exclusion aimed at an AI model vendor is now on the Federal Register calendar. The Department of Homeland Security filed a notice for public inspection on Monday, October 19 (8:45 a.m.) for publication on Tuesday, October 20, document 2026-21447, docket DHS-2026-0628, signed for publication by General Counsel James H. Percival II.

The notice says the Secretary of Homeland Security has ordered (1) exclusion of IT products and services developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., including affiliates, from federal civilian agency procurements, and (2) removal of all DeepSeek and affiliate products, and third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency IT. CISA oversees compliance.

MeriTalk reports that Secretary Markwayne Mullin signed the order on July 24 under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act. It applies to federal civilian executive branch agencies and excludes the Defense Department, the intelligence community and national-security systems. MeriTalk says DHS cited data stored in China, transmission of user prompts and responses to PRC servers, and forensic weaknesses. Whether self-hosted open-weight DeepSeek models count as "products" under the order is not clear from the notice we read.

China's response

China said on Tuesday, October 20 that it will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of its firms, Reuters reported. Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, asked about the US move, said China consistently opposes the over-generalisation of national security and the politicisation of science, technology and trade issues, according to the Reuters copy carried by The Economic Times. No concrete countermeasure was announced.

Limits

• The notice text was extracted in full; the appendix with the signed order is an image that could not be read as text, so the July 24 signing date and the PRC-storage and forensic rationales come from MeriTalk.
• Mao Ning's remarks are from a single Reuters syndication (The Economic Times); The Standard HK carries the same copy and is not independent corroboration.

Sources

• Reuters via The Economic Times: After US DeepSeek order, China says it will protect firms (October 20, 2026)
• Federal Register public inspection: Notice of Order Regarding Exclusion and Removal of DeepSeek Products (2026-21447)
• MeriTalk: DHS Orders Civilian Agencies to Remove DeepSeek AI Products (October 19, 2026)