China’s DeepSeek AI has recently taken the tech world by storm, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app last week. Despite its sudden success, cybersecurity experts are warning that the app is a privacy nightmare. Many companies and governments have already banned DeepSeek, with more joining daily.
CNBC reports that the rapid rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese-developed generative AI application, has sent shockwaves through the tech industry and raised significant concerns among privacy advocates and national security experts. Despite its unprecedented success in surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app last week, DeepSeek’s origins and potential data sharing requirements with the Chinese government have prompted warnings from cybersecurity professionals.
Developed by High Flyer, a Chinese-backed hedge fund, DeepSeek has reportedly achieved its breakthrough AI capabilities on a much lower budget than previously thought possible. However, skepticism remains regarding the actual development costs, with some estimates suggesting the company may have understated expenses by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The app’s sudden popularity has caught the attention of privacy advocates, who are cautioning Americans about the risks associated with sharing personal information through DeepSeek. Dewardric McNeal, managing director and senior policy analyst at risk management firm Longview Global, warns that the amount of data and information that could be harvested by bad actors in China is significantly greater than what could be collected from a Google search.
According to McNeal, who has studied the Chinese government’s data sharing requirements for domestic firms, DeepSeek represents a “rich trove of intelligence” that could be used for nefarious purposes. Beyond the obvious risks of personal banking or health information theft, McNeal emphasizes the potential for Chinese intelligence to exploit broader patterns of queries to gain insights into various American industries and even sow division among the public.
Matt Pearl, a former special advisor to the deputy national security advisor at the National Security Council and current strategic technologies program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, echoes these concerns. Pearl asserts that DeepSeek’s privacy policy is essentially meaningless, as the app is subject to PRC laws, making any information entered into the app fair game for Chinese authorities.
The potential threats posed by DeepSeek extend beyond data privacy, with cybersecurity experts warning of the possibility of mass malware injections through app updates. This risk has prompted swift action from various government entities, with NASA, the U.S. Navy, the State of Texas, Taiwan, and Italy all implementing prohibitions on the use of DeepSeek within days of its rise to prominence.
Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer shared his own concerns about DeepSeek during a recent podcast episode:
“China has a view called ‘disintegration warfare’ that I wrote about in my last book that tries to defeat an enemy without having to fight it,” Schweizer says. “And we know that China lies about all sorts of things – we can’t rely on their financial data or their economic data, for example.”
Schweizer and Eggers both believe the hidden hand of the CCP is involved, after seeing some of the experiments researchers have done using DeepSeek’s chatbot. Eggers says it struggles when asked about “Tank Man,” the name given to the Chinese man who stood in front of tanks as they rolled into Tiananmen Square in 1989 and massacred protesters.
Eggers describes seeing “videos online of it beginning to answer that question where it stops and says, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not capable of doing that.’”
Read more at CNBC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
