Short answer: The Department of Homeland Security ordered federal civilian agencies to stop buying DeepSeek products and to remove them, including third-party products built using DeepSeek implementations, from their IT. Private companies are not directly restricted, but software vendors to civilian agencies are affected. At list prices, GPT-5 nano and GPT-6 Luna cost less than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on a typical workload.

What exactly did DHS order?

Federal Register notice 2026-21447, filed on October 19, 2026, and published October 20, 2026, publishes notice of the order under Docket DHS-2026-0628. The Secretary of Homeland Security issued a formal order titled Notice of Order Regarding Exclusion and Removal of DeepSeek Products From Federal Civilian Executive Branch Information Technology Systems and Procurements.

The order has two parts.…