Thought Leadership
The Australian government has ordered a ban on the Chinese AI shooting star DeepSeek on all government devices. The Department of Home Affairs justifies the move with “unacceptable security risks” for the government’s IT infrastructure.
The Ministry’s directive requires all government agencies to prevent the installation and use of DeepSeek products, applications and web services. Instances that have already been installed must be removed from all government systems and devices. The ban does not apply to private users.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke emphasized that the measure serves to protect Australia’s national security and interests.
Australia is not alone
Australia is not the first country to take action against DeepSeek. Italy has already banned the app, and Taiwan also banned its use in government agencies this week. South Korea, Ireland and France have launched investigations as the user data is stored on Chinese servers. The White House is also examining possible security implications.
The AI chatbot, which was only launched on January 10, has already caused considerable turbulence on the technology stock markets. DeepSeek claims to have trained its language model with significantly less effort and cheaper hardware than the competition. This calls into question the massive Western investments in chip production and data centers.
