US holds approved DeepSeek blacklist to protect trade talks, leaving 100+ Chinese firms unrestricted
An interagency committee approved DeepSeek, memory-chip maker CXMT, and over 100 other Chinese firms for the Entity List — the Trump administration has not published any additions since October, the longest freeze in over a decade — but held off to avoid escalating US-China trade negotiations. The gap keeps firms identified as national security risks off export licensing requirements, including DeepSeek, which Anthropic says ran approximately 24,000 fraudulent API accounts to extract capabilities from Claude.
Source: cnbc.com ↗
The Entity List is like whack-a-mole and you've got to keep whacking the moles.
Philip Luck, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Why this matters
- → 100+ flagged Chinese firms remain unrestricted, enabling potential tech transfers to adversaries.
- → Longest Entity List freeze in 12+ years signals security tools deprioritized for trade talks.
- → DeepSeek, linked to military ops, avoids export controls despite documented IP theft.
Security vs. diplomacy