DHS Orders Federal Civilian Agencies to Remove DeepSeek, Including Third-Party Products

TL;DR

The Department of Homeland Security has published notice of an order that bars DeepSeek and its affiliates from federal civilian procurement. Agencies must also remove DeepSeek products, and "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations," from their IT systems. The signed order, Exclusion and Removal Order #2026-01, lists an original release date of July 24, 2026. The notice went on public inspection on October 19 and is published in the Federal Register on October 20. If you sell software to a civilian agency and any part of your stack touches a DeepSeek model, you have a supply chain problem, and the order doesn't say how far "implementations" reaches.

What the order says

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin issued the order under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018 (FASCSA) and its implementing rules at 41 CFR 201-1, after reviewing a recommendation from the Federal Acquisition Security Council. It is addressed to every federal civilian executive branch agency and copies OMB Director Russell Vought. The signed text is the six-page PDF on the Federal Register's public inspection desk, filed under docket DHS-2026-0628.

It requires two things:

• Exclusion. Agencies must keep DeepSeek, DeepSeek-affiliated entities and their products out of procurement, effective immediately. That covers agency-approved product lists, service provider equipment lists, e-commerce marketplaces and anything else agencies use to buy hardware, software and services.
• Removal. Agencies must remove products from DeepSeek and its affiliates, and third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations, from their IT systems "immediately after the issuance of the Order," or ask for an exception.

An affiliate uses the procurement-law definition at 48 CFR 2.101: either party controls or can control the other, or a third party controls both. A footnote adds that the scope includes "third party implementations of DeepSeek used to provide products and services to civilian agencies."

Why DHS says DeepSeek is a risk

The order's "Summary of Risks from Source" says DeepSeek's models "present multiple threat vectors." Its stated reasons:

• DeepSeek's servers are in the People's Republic of China, and PRC law gives government cyber and intelligence agencies broad authority to access private company infrastructure.
• For DeepSeek-hosted models, account creation collects personally identifiable information and "may also track and digitally fingerprint users."
• Prompts sent to the hosted apps "may result in the transfer of sensitive data to the PRC" if federal employees or vendors use them, and that data could "produce actionable intelligence on U.S. persons and/or government programs."
• "The models themselves may contain malware or other security vulnerabilities." The order cites NowSecure's February 2025 audit, which found multiple critical vulnerabilities in DeepSeek's iOS app.

Most of that rationale is about DeepSeek's hosted service: its accounts, its servers, its app. The removal clause goes further and also names products built using DeepSeek. Builders should watch that gap.

The word nobody defined: "implementations"

DeepSeek publishes open weights on Hugging Face, so its models run inside other companies' products as well as its own app and API. The order never says what counts as "developed using DeepSeek implementations." Plausible readings, from narrowest to broadest:

• A product that calls DeepSeek's hosted API.
• A product that self-hosts DeepSeek weights on US infrastructure.
• A model fine-tuned from DeepSeek weights and sold under another name.
• A model distilled from DeepSeek outputs, or a tool that offers DeepSeek as one option in a model picker.

The data-to-China rationale fits the first reading cleanly. It fits the second barely, since self-hosted weights send nothing to Hangzhou. The malware-in-the-model line is the clause that could stretch to cover the rest. Until CISA says otherwise, a contracting officer can choose the broad reading, and you'd be the one explaining your model lineage.

Think of it like a food recall that lists the peanut supplier and "any product made with its peanuts," but doesn't say whether peanut oil, a shared factory line or a recipe inspired by peanuts counts. Prudent shops pull everything that might qualify and ask questions after.

A small detail suggests the drafting was quick. Two footnotes define an affiliate "of DeepSeek AG." DeepSeek is a Hangzhou company, not a Swiss one. The only earlier FASCSA order, issued by the Director of National Intelligence in September 2025, targeted Acronis AG. Template reuse happens to the best of us, though most of us aren't publishing ours in the Federal Register.

A July order, made public in October

The order lists an original release date of July 24, 2026. MeriTalk reports that the restrictions took effect in late July, and CyberScoop says the ban has been in place for months. The public notice was filed for inspection at 8:45 a.m. on October 19, 87 days after the July date.

That timing matters for exceptions. Agencies have to request one in writing "within 60 days of the issuance of this order." If that clock started on July 24, it ran out around September 22, a month before most vendors could have read the order. MeriTalk's subhead describes 60 days to remove covered technology. In the signed text, removal is immediate and the 60 days apply only to exception requests.

Where it hits builders: FAR 52.204-30

The order binds agencies. Contractors get pulled in through FAR 52.204-30, the FASCSA orders clause (December 2023). In a contract that carries it, "Contractors shall not provide or use as part of the performance of the contract any covered article." The clause tells you to search SAM.gov for the phrase "FASCSA order," recheck at least every three months during performance, and pass the substance of the clause down to subcontracts, commercial ones included.

If you find a covered article in your delivery, the reporting clock is short:

Three business days is not enough time to work out whether the open-weight model under your summarizer descends from DeepSeek. Do that inventory now.

What to do this week

• Build a model bill of materials. For every model in a government deliverable, record who trained the base weights, what you fine-tuned or distilled from, and where inference runs. Include models your vendors' tools call.
• Turn off DeepSeek in routers and pickers for government tenants. If your product lets users choose DeepSeek through a gateway or a provider dropdown, a per-tenant block is cheaper than a contracting officer's reading of "implementations."
• Treat fine-tunes and distills as covered until told otherwise. The order gives no safe harbor for self-hosted or derivative weights. The broad reading is the conservative one.
• Ask CISA directly. The order lists [email protected] for questions, assistance and reporting. CISA will also review exception requests and can give technical help to agencies that lack the capacity to comply.

What stays out of scope

DHS's FASCSA authority stops at civilian systems. The order excludes national security systems and sensitive compartmented information systems, which fall to the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence. It doesn't touch private companies selling to private customers. Commercial users can keep running DeepSeek V4-class weights in a homelab or a startup backend. The order does create a reason for any company with federal ambitions to keep DeepSeek out of its default stack.

While removal is underway, the order encourages agencies to monitor traffic in and out of their networks, add logging and data exfiltration controls on affected systems, and flag anomalous activity. DHS has to review the order within one year and annually after that.

Key Takeaways

• DHS FASCSA Exclusion and Removal Order #2026-01 bars DeepSeek and its affiliates from federal civilian procurement and orders their products removed from civilian agency IT immediately.
• The removal clause also covers "third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations," a phrase the order never defines.
• The order lists a July 24, 2026 release date and became public on October 19-20. The 60-day window in it is for exception requests, not for removal.
• Contractors are pulled in through FAR 52.204-30: no covered articles in contract performance, a report within 3 business days of finding one, and a mitigation update within 10 more.
• DoD, the intelligence community, national security systems and SCI systems are outside DHS's order. Private-sector use isn't covered at all.
• If you sell to civilian agencies, inventory your model lineage now and block DeepSeek for government tenants rather than waiting for CISA to define "implementations."

Sources: Federal Register public inspection: DHS notice of order 2026-21447, signed Exclusion and Removal Order #2026-01 (PDF), Regulations.gov docket DHS-2026-0628, FAR 52.204-30, 41 U.S.C. 1323, 41 CFR part 201-1, Crowell: first FASCSA order (Acronis), MeriTalk, CyberScoop, NowSecure