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Investing.com -- A senior U.S. official has reportedly said that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is supporting China’s military and intelligence operations while attempting to circumvent U.S. semiconductor restrictions, as disclosed by Reuters on Monday.
The Hangzhou-based company, which made headlines in January with claims that its AI reasoning models matched or exceeded U.S. industry leaders at lower costs, has been providing assistance that "goes above and beyond open-source access to DeepSeek’s AI models," according to a senior State Department official quoted by Reuters.
The official said that DeepSeek has tried to use Southeast Asian shell companies to obtain high-end semiconductors that cannot be shipped directly to China under current U.S. export rules.
Among the allegations, the U.S. government claims DeepSeek is sharing user information and statistics with Beijing’s surveillance apparatus. This could raise privacy concerns for the company’s tens of millions of daily global users worldwide.
While Chinese law requires companies operating in China to provide data to the government when requested, the suggestion that DeepSeek is already actively sharing such information represents previously unreported intelligence.
U.S. lawmakers have previously noted that DeepSeek’s privacy disclosure statements indicate the company transmits American users’ data to China through "backend infrastructure" connected to China Mobile (NYSE:CHL), a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company.