A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress to ban China’s DeepSeek AI software from government-owned devices.

The legislation is being introduced by U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), claim that the technology of the company poses a risk to national security.

LaHood stated in a press release that the United States cannot afford to lose the technology race against the Chinese Communist Party. The national security threat DeepSeek, a CCP-affiliated company, poses to the United States is alarming.

He claimed that DeepSeek, a generative AI program, can collect data from U.S. users to be used by Chinese authorities in an unidentified manner.

According to Ivan Tsarynny CEO of Feroot Security which specializes in data protection and cybersecurity, the chatbot app has a hidden code that can send login information from users to China Mobile. This is a state-owned telecommunications firm that was banned from operating in America.

Gottheimer stated that “under no circumstances” could we allow CCP to access sensitive personal or government data.

DeepSeek’s representative could not be reached to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported the bill first, saying that DeepSeek had not responded to a comment request.

DeepSeek, founded in 2023 and based in the United States, entered the public consciousness of Americans late last month after reports that it could produce better AI results for a fraction of the cost of what American tech companies have been able so far to achieve. These fears led to a brief drop in U.S. technology stocks last week.

Some technologists say that the reports are not accurate, and there is still debate over whether they accurately reflect DeepSeek’s development costs.

“It’s mindboggling that we are unknowingly allowing China to survey Americans and we’re doing nothing about it,” Tsarynny told the AP. “It’s hard to believe that something like this was accidental. There are so many unusual things to this. You know that saying ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire’? In this instance, there’s a lot of smoke,” he said.