Treasurer Stacy Garrity bans DeepSeek AI platform from Pennsylvania Treasury devices

Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity took action on Thursday to ban the Chinese DeepSeek artificial intelligence platform from all Treasury devices in a move she said would strengthen cybersecurity and protect sensitive information belonging to Pennsylvania residents. 

“Our team at Treasury deals with billions of dollars that belong to the residents of the Commonwealth, so keeping our computer network secure is a top priority,” Garrity said Thursday in a statement. “There are growing fears that DeepSeek is directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), potentially allowing the Chinese government to obtain sensitive government or personal data. Banning DeepSeek is necessary to ensure the safety of Pennsylvanians’ hard-earned tax dollars and other important, sensitive information entrusted to Treasury.”

Garrity’s departmental ban applies to laptops, cell phones and other devices that can access the internet. The department’s firewall has also been adjusted to block access to the DeepSeek app and the startup’s website. 

The Chinese-based AI platform has caused a stir in the United States in recent months, as DeepSeek said its models rival those of U.S. companies like OpenAI, and were developed at a fraction of the cost of top U.S. artificial intelligence models. DeepSeek’s chatbot assistant at one point even surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the Apple App Store in the U.S, according to Reuters. 

The app’s early success rattled U.S. markets in January, causing some U.S. technology stocks to drop precipitously. According to The Associated Press, downloads of the app were paused in South Korea this week amid privacy concerns. 

This isn’t the first time Garrity moved to ban Chinese-based apps from Treasury devices and platforms. 

Garrity announced in December 2022 that the social media app TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, would be banned from Treasury devices, a decision she told City & State was made at the recommendation of the department’s chief information officer.

 Government officials and cybersecurity experts alike have raised concerns about the Chinese government’s ability to access the data of U.S. citizens who use apps like TikTok and DeepSeek – both of which are owned by Chinese companies. That’s in part because of an intelligence law passed by Chinese officials in 2017 that says that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the (National Intelligence) Law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work from becoming known to the public.”

James Andrew Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told City & State in 2023 that the law essentially says “any Chinese company must cooperate with their intelligence agencies.”

Garrity noted in Thursday’s press release that the Pennsylvania Treasury routinely works to protect the data and sensitive information of Pennsylvanians, adding that the department’s firewall blocked more than 200 million requests in 2024 alone.

“Building and updating our systems to best protect our data is crucial to our operations and to the security of our state and our country,” she said.