The DeepSeek search page is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a laptop screen displaying the Deepseek homepage in London on Jan. 29, 2025. Leon Neal/Getty Images
Seven Republican senators recently signed on to a letter asking the Commerce Department to examine data security risks and potential backdoors in Chinese open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models such as DeepSeek.
The group, led by Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who announced the Aug. 1 letter in a press release on Aug. 4, asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to identify any threats from data collection by AI use case applications being sent back to China-based servers.
