South Korea’s government is the latest to block China’s DeepSeek on official devices, following Australia and Taiwan

(Credit: Anthony Kwan—Getty Images)

DeepSeek’s AI model, as capable as OpenAI’s work yet developed at a fraction of the cost, sparked a broad selloff in tech and semiconductor shares last week as investors were forced to rethink the U.S’s AI lead and China’s ability to catch up.

Now, the Chinese AI model is spooking the public sector, too.