US delays blacklisting DeepSeek and 100 other Chinese firms

The Trump administration has paused a sweeping move that would have put DeepSeek, CXMT and more than 100 other Chinese firms on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, even after an interagency committee approved the names last year. The delay leaves one of China’s most closely watched AI companies outside Washington’s toughest trade restrictions, despite mounting concern that it poses a security risk.

That hesitation captures the administration’s competing goals. On one side is the push to tighten export controls against Chinese technology firms seen as tied to military and intelligence activity. On the other is the desire to avoid a fresh confrontation with Beijing that could invite retaliation, unsettle markets and further harden the technology split between the world’s two largest economies.

DeepSeek became a global name in January 2025, when its low-cost AI model rattled the technology industry. Since then, U.S. officials have accused the company of supporting China’s military and intelligence operations and of trying to use shell companies in Southeast Asia to obtain advanced U.S. chips. Its continued absence from the Entity List is notable because that list is among Washington’s most powerful export-control tools: American companies generally cannot ship goods, software or technology to listed firms without a license, and those licenses are usually denied.

The delay also reaches beyond DeepSeek. Anthropic has said it identified a campaign involving DeepSeek and two other Chinese AI labs to extract capabilities from its Claude platform, while OpenAI warned lawmakers that DeepSeek was targeting its models as well. Those claims have sharpened the view in Washington that the AI race with China is not only about chip access, but also about model theft, cyber probing and the protection of proprietary systems.

CXMT’s inclusion would have carried its own weight. The memory chipmaker had already been designated a Chinese military company by the Pentagon under the Biden administration, underscoring why U.S. security officials view it as strategically sensitive. Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security did not directly explain why publication of the list stalled, leaving companies and investors in limbo as officials weigh whether to press harder or step back from a move that could widen the tech war with China.