Husted, Republicans to Commerce secretary: Safeguard U.S. data, innovation from Communist China

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) joined Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and five other Senate Republican colleagues in writing to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to urge the department to identify and evaluate potential security vulnerabilities posed by Chinese open-source AI models like DeepSeek.

“DeepSeek’s R1’s model release in late January demonstrated the aptitude of People's Republic of China (PRC) national AI talent and the progress their home-grown models have made relative to leading U.S. products,” wrote the lawmakers. 

“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,” they continued.

“Concerningly, R1 has been found to produce potentially harmful content at higher rates than peer American models. It is probable that R1 did not undergo comprehensive red-teaming and safety tests to prevent the generation of harmful content prior to release,” added the policymakers.

“Given their restricted access to the most advanced compute resources, the PRC has seemingly adopted a strategy of imbedding open-source AI models into applications and services as a way to compete with the U.S. for global AI leadership,” they wrote.

“The 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. In order to prevent a similar situation, we ask that you identify and evaluate any potential backdoors or vulnerabilities posed by Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek's R1,” wrote the lawmakers.

DeepSeek poses a major national security threat. U.S. officials believe that DeepSeek has provided, and will likely continue to provide, support to China’s military and intelligence operations.

This letter builds on Husted’s work to protect America against the threats of Communist China’s exploiting American government workers and exposing their data.

Husted and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) introduced bipartisan legislation to prohibit DeepSeek—which has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party—from operating on any federal government devices or networks.

Several U.S. states and allied nations have already moved to block DeepSeek from government devices because of critical security concerns about the model.