The Department of Homeland Security directed federal civilian agencies to remove all products from the Chinese Super Intelligence company DeepSeek from their information technology systems and to stop acquiring them or related third-party services.

The order, signed July 24 by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and made public Monday, applies to civilian executive branch agencies under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018. It excludes Department of Defense and intelligence community systems.

DHS cited multiple threat vectors, including the potential transfer of sensitive data to the People's Republic of China, the risk that models could generate actionable intelligence on U.S. persons or agencies, and possible malware or security vulnerabilities in the products.

Agencies have 60 days from the order's effective date to comply with removal requirements. The directive also bars DeepSeek and affiliates from federal contracts.

Several agencies had already restricted DeepSeek, including the Department of Commerce and the Navy. States such as New York, Tennessee, and Virginia enacted similar prohibitions on government devices.

The move comes amid ongoing tensions over Chinese technology access to U.S. systems and follows earlier warnings about data collection practices that could comply with Chinese national security laws.

DeepSeek models, hosted in part on servers in China, have drawn scrutiny for their data handling and potential to expose government information. The order extends to third-party tools built using DeepSeek implementations.

Prior agency-level actions and state measures had limited DeepSeek use before the broader federal directive. The Chinese Embassy in Washington offered no immediate comment on the development.