{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.budd.senate.gov/2025/08/04/sen-budd-senate-colleagues-urge-secretary-lutnick-to-probe-deepseek-ais-connections-to-chinese-military-intelligence/", "Sen. Budd, Senate Colleagues Urge Secretary Lutnick to Probe DeepSeek AI\u2019s Connections to Chinese Military, Intelligence", "2025-08-04", "2025", "2025-08", "Republican", "Senate", "NC", "Ted Budd", "B001305", "www.budd.senate.gov", "budd", "https://www.budd.senate.gov/category/news/press-releases/page/", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2014 U.S. Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) recently led a group of Senate colleagues in urging Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to probe allegations made by U.S. officials that DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence has provided support to the People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s military and intelligence operations. The letter requests that the Department of Commerce investigate these allegations and thoroughly review threats posed by other Chinese open-source models that may be feeding information back to servers with ties to the Chinese government.\n\nIn the letter to Secretary Lutnick, the Senators wrote:\n\n\u201cWe write to you regarding concerning security vulnerabilities and the potential compromising of American personal and enterprise data through the use of DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence (AI) reasoning models. Recent reporting states that U.S. officials believe that DeepSeek \u201chas willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China\u2019s military and intelligence operations.\u201d The article further states that U.S. officials allege that DeepSeek is sharing user information and statistics with Beijing\u2019s surveillance apparatus.\n\n\u201cThese allegations are deeply troubling. DeepSeek\u2019s R1\u2019s model release in late January demonstrated the aptitude of People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) national AI talent and the progress their home-grown models have made relative to leading U.S. products. The Trump Administration has rightly emphasized winning the AI competition against the PRC, and the development of AI use case applications for businesses and consumers is an important facet of that competition. Ensuring that such applications are secure and not prone to leaking secure information and malign exploitation is paramount [\u2026]\n\n\u201cThe U.S. government has previously recognized the threats posed by the wide-spread adoption of certain PRC technologies. For example, Congress funded a multi-billion program to remove Huawei telecommunications hardware from American networks after it was determined that such hardware could contain backdoors for PRC espionage.\u201d\n\nThe letter requests that the Commerce Department evaluate potential backdoors or vulnerabilities posed by Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek\u2019s R1 and provide a briefing to Congress regarding any relevant findings. Specifically, the letter also asks the department to elaborate on its plans to focus on cybersecurity and data protection as part of the work of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), and review how AI models may be circumventing export controls on semiconductors.\n\nJoining Sen. Budd in sending this letter were Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), John Husted (R-Ohio), John Curtis (R-Utah), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).\n\nRead the full text of this letter HERE.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:02:47Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.budd.senate.gov/2025/08/04/sen-budd-senate-colleagues-urge-secretary-lutnick-to-probe-deepseek-ais-connections-to-chinese-military-intelligence/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0908287949860096, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}