Texas Governor Greg Abbott made headlines by issuing a ban on Chinese AI company DeepSeek, as well as popular social media apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 on all state-issued devices. This move marks Texas as the first state to take such action against DeepSeek. Governor Abbott cited concerns about the Chinese Communist Party infiltrating critical state infrastructure through data-harvesting AI and social media apps as the reason for the ban.
DeepSeek, an AI startup, has been making waves in the industry by competing with industry leader OpenAI. Meanwhile, U.S. users have been flocking to Xiaohongshu as a replacement for TikTok, which faced a short-lived ban in the U.S. Lemon8, owned by the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, also gained traction ahead of the original TikTok ban.
Many states and the federal government have already banned TikTok on government devices, with President Trump issuing an executive order for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations. The future of TikTok remains uncertain as ByteDance has yet to provide comment on the situation.
Governor Abbott’s office declined to comment further on the ban. The move has drawn attention to the ongoing concerns about Chinese companies and their potential influence on U.S. infrastructure.
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