Australia bans China's DeepSeek from government tech over security

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said in a statement that all DeepSeek products, applications and services would be removed from government systems on national security concerns

By Ben Westcott

 

Australia has banned DeepSeek AI services from all government systems and devices, becoming one of the first countries to take direct action against a Chinese artificial intelligence startup that shook Silicon Valley and global markets this year. 

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said in a statement Tuesday that all DeepSeek products, applications and services would be removed from government systems on national security grounds effective immediately. A threat assessment by the country’s intelligence agencies found the technology posed an unacceptable risk, he said.

 

Founded in Hangzhou only 20 months ago, DeepSeek’s technology made waves in January with a new mobile app featuring its reasoning AI chatbot — which articulates its approximation of thought process and research before delivering a response — that seemed to suggest top-tier AI could be developed without huge investments in hardware. Its appeal took it to the top of worldwide download charts. However, doubts quickly arose about the security of the service.

 

“AI is a technology full of potential and opportunity but the government will not hesitate to act when our agencies identify a national security risk,” Burke said in the statement. Forestalling any criticisms about Australia acting against the app simply because of its Chinese origin, he added that the government’s approach was “country-agnostic and focused on the risk to the Australian government and our assets.”

 

The action does not extend to the personal devices of private citizens. However, Australians could “read something into the fact that the government has decided that it’s not secure to have on government phones,” Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Murray Watt told Channel 7 on Wednesday.

 

“People might want to have a think about that when it comes to their personal phones,” he said. “We’d certainly be encouraging people to really get across the online privacy guidelines and rules that DeepSeek has and make a really good decision about whether they want to take that risk themselves.”

 

Australia is not the first country to take action against DeepSeek. Italy’s privacy regulator has ordered for it to be blocked to protect consumers’ data, while Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has asked for more information from the company. Hundreds of private companies have also taken the precautionary measure of blocking access to DeepSeek, Bloomberg News reported last week.

 

The Australian government was a leader in deciding to ban Chinese networking giant Huawei Technologies Co. from its 5G systems in 2018, which sparked a diplomatic feud between Canberra and Beijing. The spat eventually culminated in China imposing trade sanctions on Australian exports at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Relations between the two countries have improved since the election of the center-left Anthony Albanese government in May 2022.