Following last month’s blockbuster launch of DeepSeek, a Chinese-owned artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that sent U.S. financial markets into a tailspin due to its direct competition with ChatGPT, reports have surfaced that the new AI program sends user data directly to the communist regime’s government.

In an ABC News report published Wednesday, a cybersecurity expert says he found code hidden within DeepSeek that sends user data to China Mobile’s website, a company owned and operated by Beijing. “We see direct links to servers and to companies in China that are under control of the Chinese government,” said Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot Security. “And this is something that we have never seen in the past.”

As ABC noted, “Users who register or log in to DeepSeek may unknowingly be creating accounts in China, making their identities, search queries, and online behavior visible to Chinese state systems.” In 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned China Mobile from operating in the U.S. due to its “unauthorized access to customer … data [which] could create irreparable damage to U.S. national security.”

Concerns over data harvesting by Xi Jinping’s regime are already leading other countries to take action. On Tuesday, it was reported that Australia banned DeepSeek from its government platforms. In addition, Italy enacted a nationwide ban on the AI program. Some U.S. agencies are also blocking DeepSeek, including the U.S. Navy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The state of Texas also enacted a ban of the chatbot on government devices.

At the national level, the Trump administration has so far signaled a mixed stance on China, despite tough rhetoric from administration officials. The president enacted a 10% tariff on Chinese goods this week but has also suspended enforcement of a ban on the China-owned social media app TikTok, which has been shown to harvest data for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at a massive scale.

During Tuesday’s episode of “Outstanding,” author and China expert Gordon Chang warned that DeepSeek is the latest example of the CCP stealing American technology.

“It is a big threat,” he underscored. “DeepSeek is open source. In other words, we can see it, we can see the algorithm. And yes, it is better than [ChatGPT] … but it is not as frightening as it first appeared. … [W]e know that DeepSeek stole ChatGPT. What the Chinese did — and it’s very clear now that this is the case — their large language model, DeepSeek model R1, was distilling ChatGPT’s large language model. In other words, they … learned off of ChatGPT. That’s a violation of OpenAI’s terms of service. This was one big intellectual property theft.”

Chang, who serves as a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, went on to question China’s claims about DeepSeek.

“[L]et’s remember that this was not a $6 million project as the Chinese [claimed],” he pointed out. “This was a lot more expensive than that, and I think it probably took a lot longer than we believe. … I find it a little bit too convenient that DeepSeek releases its model on January 20th of all days, the day that there’s a change in management in the U.S. But they launch it at a time where there’s a propaganda blitz by the Communist Party in China’s central government about the futility of American sanctions. … I don’t believe in very many coincidences when it comes to Communist Party programs. So I think that this was a party project.”

“That’s not to say the Chinese aren’t ahead of us,” Chang added. “Yeah, they are ahead of us — we can see it from the open source, but they’re not as far ahead of us as we thought two or three weeks ago.”