Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a statewide ban of the Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek on all government networks and devicesMonday— fearing “foreign government surveillance.”
The decision comes after Wall Street and Silicon Valley got clobbered over rising fears about DeepSeek – a Chinese artificial intelligence startup owned by High-Flyer, a China-based firm based that claims to have developed an advanced model at a fraction of the cost of its US counterparts.
“Public safety is my top priority and we’re working aggressively to protect New Yorkers from foreign and domestic threats,” Hochul said in the statement.
“New York will continue fighting to combat cyber threats, ensure the privacy and safety of our data, and safeguard against state-sponsored censorship.”
Hochul’s ban comes after a US bipartisan coalition introduced an act to ban the Chinese AI app on government-owned electronics on Thursday.James Messerschmidt
New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a statewide ban of DeepSeek’s chatbot app on government networks and devices on Monday.REUTERSThe ban will prevent the chatbot app from being downloaded by all government devices and networks due to “serious concerns” about DeepSeek AI’s “connection to foreign government surveillance and censorship, including how DeepSeek can be used to harvest user data and steal technology secrets,” the statement added.
Hochul and other government officials have raised concerns about government surveillance and improper storage of user data.AFP via Getty Images
The lawmakers referenced intel that the Chinese app has intentionally hidden code that could send user login information to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company that has been banned in the US.
Major US tech stocks — including Nvidia, Microsoft and Tesla — suffered a $1 trillion rout on Jan. 27 after DeepSeek announced it had built it’s AI model in a matter of months for just $6 million.
The announcement upended industry forecasts from tech giants such as Sam Altman’s OpenAI GPT-4 computer chip that would take $100 million to train, and rival company Anthropic’s model which would cost a whopping $1 billion in training.
The ban will effect all ITS-managed government devices and networks in New York state.Hans Pennink
DeepSeek immediately surged to the top of the charts in Apple’s App Store – displacing OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other competitors.
The company released details in January about their R1 reasoning model that underpins its chatbot. The AI firm turned heads in Silicon Valley with a research paper explaining how it built the model, and claiming that it excels at problem-solving despite being cheaper to train and run than its rivals.
The news sent the US tech and AI industry into a panic.
In October, Hochul announced the launch of New York’s Empire AI consortium, a collection of public and private research institutions to advance AI research.
Elon Musk threatened to claw back $59 million he said the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent “last week to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants” — a claim that City Hall officials rebutted Monday.
Musk said in an early morning post on X that the funds were “just discovered” by his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — even as President Trump called for a complete overhaul of FEMA that could even see it shuttered.
Trump last month signed an executive order to create a council to review FEMA as he expressed “serious concerns of political bias” in the agency.
Musk’s threat could put Mayor Eric Adams in an awkward position, as Hizzoner has desperately pleaded for funding from the federal government during the years-long migrant crisis that has cost the city $7 billion.
“Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk wrote.
Elon Musk has revealed that the Department of Government Efficiency has discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency spent $59 million on luxury NYC hotels “to house illegal migrants.”REUTERS “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high-end hotels for illegals,” continued Musk, who leads the agency tasked with cutting back on government overspending.
“A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
City Hall officials told The Post that no one has reached out for action on Musk’s demand.
They also issued a statement denying Musk’s assertions that carefully avoided naming the mercurial billionaire or explicitly saying he was dead wrong.
The hands-off approach to Musk coincided with Adams convening a meeting of his top commissioners to tell them to avoid criticizing Trump in order to avoid putting billions in federal funds for the city at risk, The Post learned.
'Only/ $19 million of the $59 million that Musk highlighted in his tweet will go toward housing migrants in hotels, luxury or otherwise, officials said.
“We have already spent over $7 billion on this crisis alone, and the previous administration committed only $237 million in funding to help house the migrants in our care and for future services,” the City Hall statement reads.
“We have continued to receive previously allocated reimbursements through the past week. We will discuss this matter directly with federal officials.”
Many of Musk’s claims couldn’t immediately be confirmed as the brash Tesla mogul didn’t disclose details about the money in his incendiary screed, which he coupled with a tweet endorsing the firing of FEMA officials who okayed the funds.
Taking to X, the world’s richest man said Monday that FEMA “violated the law” by sending this money to various swanky hotels in the Big Apple.@elonmusk/X
The city has never paid luxury hotel rates for housing migrants and pointed out that the money is not a disaster relief grant, officials said.
And the vast majority of the roughly 200 makeshift shelters that housed asylum seekers during the crisis weren’t luxury hotels, with the eye-grabbing exceptions being the swanky Row Hotel and Watson Hotel.
The years-long migrant crisis has so far cost Gotham $7 billion, Adams has said, often lamenting the relative pittance offered by the federal government for what he argues is a national failure.
The city expects roughly $237 million will eventually be ponied up by the feds, but only $81 million of that was paid as of last week, officials told The Post.
Several deportation raids in and around NYC have taken place in the last few weeks.DEA New York
Those officials modified the city budget in November to account for $118 million in new FEMA funding through the federal Shelter and Services Program, which reimburses certain migrant housing costs in 35 communities in states affected by the border crisis.
Congress set aside $650 million for the overall program, and New York City applied for funds in 2024, federal records show. Customs and Border Protection works with FEMA to disburse the money allocated by Congress.
The Big Apple ultimately was granted $59 million last year, which corresponds with the FEMA payment that Musk claimed is illegal, records show.
The grant won’t all go toward hotels — the majority will be spent on reimbursing other services the city shouldered as it cared for hundreds of thousands of migrants requiring food, health care and other needs as they flowed into the city, officials said.
ICE, DHS and ATF joined forces to carry out mass deportation raids in the Big Apple.ATFNewYork/X
Roughly $26 million of that FEMA grant will go toward food, security and other services, with another $13 million going toward congregate shelters, according to city officials.
Those reimbursed expenses are from the city’s costs from dealing with the migrant crisis between November 2023 and October, officials said.
Musk and DOGE have taken a wrecking-ball approach to their mission, which critics have argued is unconstitutional.
Within FEMA, his small team — which doesn’t have security clearance — has gained access to the agency’s network containing private information on tens of thousands of disaster victims, the Washington Post reported.
The agency is responsible for bringing in emergency services, supplies and aid to disaster-struck areas.
The scrutiny on FEMA follows Trump’s high-profile criticism of the agency, which resulted in his executive order.
The 47th president called on the FEMA review council to have its first meeting within 90 days — saying he expects a report of the findings on his desk within 180 days of the council’s first meeting.
Days earlier, Trump, 78, appeared alongside still-homeless survivors of Hurricane Helene four months after the storm, where he raised the idea of overhauling FEMA.
The POTUS slammed the performance of the agency, saying it was “not on the ball … and we’re going to turn it all around.”
The president then told a roundtable of federal and local officials that he will be “signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA — or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, that FEMA’s not good.”
The raids served as part of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.DEA New York
He also accused the agency — which is responsible for bringing in emergency services, supplies and aid to disaster-struck areas — of bungling emergency relief efforts, adding that US states should be given federal handouts directly in the wake of disasters.
Over the past couple of years, funding for the agency has soared following several high-profile weather-related disasters around the country.
