DeepSeek Set for US Entity List Over Military Ties, White House Pauses Move

DeepSeek was scheduled for inclusion on a US government blacklist last year before officials paused the move to prevent diplomatic friction ahead of a state visit. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security prepared the designation over concerns that the company supported military and intelligence operations in China. This regulatory action would have blocked American firms from selling technology directly to DeepSeek.

Commerce Department prepared designation over concerns that the company supported military and intelligence operations in China.

The proposed restriction targets DeepSeek alongside more than 100 other Chinese enterprises under the Entity List framework. That list prohibits US institutions from conducting business with designated entities like memory chipmaker CXMT and AI developer DeepSeek. The White House decided against finalizing the update to avoid complicating trade relations during President Donald Trump's upcoming state visit.

Anthropic has accused DeepSeek of illegally using Claude models to improve its own systems through a process called distillation. Anthropic alleges that DeepSeek employed deceptive methods to obtain restricted computing power for training its artificial intelligence systems. Two other unnamed Chinese frontier models allegedly participated in this activity according to Anthropic's allegations.

DeepSeek reportedly circumvented chip restrictions by purchasing banned Nvidia processors through shell companies. Nvidia has explicitly denied that it sold hardware to DeepSeek despite these reports. The Entity List designation aims to restrict American technology exports to firms aiding China’s military and intelligence sectors.