The Czech government has banned the use of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek and its products in the country’s public administration.

The ban comes together with an official warning against the use of DeepSeek by the Czech Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB), rating the threat in connection with DeepSeek as “High” with “probability ranging from likely to very likely.”

“Based on these findings and the NÚKIB analysis, the government decided to ban the use of products, applications, solutions, or web services offered by the DeepSeek company in the Czech public administration,” the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, was quoted as saying by the Czech Television (CT) on Wednesday, July 9.

Fiala made the comments following the cabinet session on Wednesday and also warned that DeepSeek data is stored in China and Russia without sufficient protection and that DeepSeek may be obliged to make the data available to the Chinese government.

“In the analysis that led to this warning, we relied on a combination of our own findings and information from out international partners,” NÚKIB director Lukáš Kintr said a in a press release NÚKIB issued on July 10, adding that company products “handle data in a way that may pose a security risk for entities falling under the Act on Cyber Security."

Kintr also recalled the large-scale cyberattack by the China-linked ATP31 group, which targeted the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and which prompted EU, Nato and US officials to condemn China for the attack.

“It shows that Beijing is prepared to act in direct contradiction to the interests of the Czech Republic,” Kintr concluded.

As bne IntelliNews reported in May, Czechia blamed China for being behind cyberattacks against its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through which hackers could have obtained access to thousands of emails, including while Czechia held the EU’s rotating presidency.

“China is meddling with our society [by] manipulation, propaganda, cyberattacks,” the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Lipavský, posted on his X social media profile on May 28, adding that “we have uncovered the attackers right during the attack.”

As in Fiala’s statement, NÚKIB warned against the use of DeepSeek products, applications, solutions, websites and web services, including application programming interfaces (so-called APIs), as well as the same array of tools provided by DeepSeek “predecessors, successors, parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.”

The ban on the use of DeepSeek in the Czech public administration comes just weeks after the US MFA officials warned against DeepSeek and its links to the Chinese state surveillance and espionage, CT noted.