NPR reported that Samm Sacks, a Chinese cybersecurity expert at Yale University, said that DeepSeek could actually pose a national security risk in the United States, as many countries around the world question the security of information when using this AI chatbot.
“The data collected, when aggregated, can help analyze user behavior, which can lead to more effective phishing attacks or disinformation campaigns,” Sacks said.
Meanwhile, according to the company's terms of service, DeepSeek transfers all data collected from US users to servers in China, which is the biggest concern for cybersecurity experts.
However, to date, there have been no reports of Chinese officials using DeepSeek to collect personal information on US citizens.
NPR says the situation is similar to the TikTok controversy, with the main concern being that a company based in China remains subject to the control of the U.S. government, which could lead to the risk of sensitive American data being accessed by a rival country.
Ms. Sacks from Yale University emphasized that China has a huge amount of data on Americans, after a series of cyber attacks on the US Treasury Department, telecommunications companies and the recent purchase and sale of personal data.
Beijing could very well use AI to analyze this data for strategic purposes. “China already has a high level of access to American data, even without a potential backdoor like DeepSeek,” Sacks said.
She also noted that DeepSeek is open source, unlike most popular AI chatbots today, which are kept confidential as intellectual property.
However, while making the source code public could help control how the data is handled, US experts remain unclear about what happens to the data after it is stored in China, where DeepSeek is subject to national security laws and could be forced to hand over the data to the government.
As of press time, DeepSeek and its parent company, hedge fund High-Flyer, have not responded to requests for comment.
