DHS orders DeepSeek out of US federal civilian agencies, including third-party products built on it

The US Department of Homeland Security has ordered DeepSeek's products out of the federal civilian government. A notice filed for public inspection in the Federal Register on October 19, and set to be published on October 20, says the Secretary of Homeland Security has issued an order that does two things. It excludes information technology products and services developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd and its affiliates from federal civilian agency procurements. And it requires the removal of all DeepSeek and DeepSeek-affiliate products, and of third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency information technology.

THE AUTHORITY

The order uses the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 and follows a recommendation from the Federal Acquisition Security Council, the notice says. CISA's Cybersecurity Division is handling implementation. The signed order is in the notice's appendix and on regulations.gov under docket DHS-2026-0628.

WHAT IT COVERS

Federal civilian agencies, per the notice's title; it does not reach private companies. The wide part is the third-party clause: it covers tools other companies have built on DeepSeek's models, which matters because DeepSeek publishes its weights openly, under the MIT license for its current V4.1 Flash.

WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW

How long agencies have to remove the products, how "developed using DeepSeek implementations" will be read for fine-tuned or distilled models, and whether DeepSeek will respond. The order itself is a scanned appendix to the notice, which we have not transcribed.