D.C. Lawmakers Take Aim at DeepSeek

ImageJust in: The Justice Department agreed to temporarily restrict workers from Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team from gaining access to information in the Treasury Department payment system.The news comes as Washington grapples with a big debate: Can President Trump unilaterally decide to spend less on an area than what Congress has approved? It has taken on more significance amid the torrent of headlines about what Musk’s panel has discovered about where taxpayer money is going — and in some cases what should be “deleted.”This question is likely to determine how successful Musk can be in reducing government spending.The Impoundment Control Act, passed in 1974, appears to limit the president’s ability to freeze funds allocated by Congress, but the Trump administration appears ready to challenge it.

Here’s some background to get up to speed on the battle that seems likely to play out.Following the TikTok playbook for DeepSeekThe emergence of DeepSeek in recent weeks as a force in artificial intelligence took Silicon Valley and Washington by surprise, with tech leaders and policymakers forced to grapple with the Chinese phenom.(President Trump has said the app is a “wake-up call.”)American tech giants have had to respond to DeepSeek’s technological breakthroughs.

Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, lawmakers will seek to put restrictions on the app over security concerns — a similar step to what they did to TikTok years ago.Legislators want to ban DeepSeek from government-owned devices, citing concerns that it could send user information to Beijing.The authors of the forthcoming House bill cited analysis by Feroot Security, a cybersecurity firm, that found intentionally hidden code that could send user login details to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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