
Texas Governor Bans These Chinese-Owned Apps on Government Devices
By Movieguide® Contributor
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has moved to ban two new Chinese-owned apps from government devices: social media platform RedNote and AI chatbot DeepSeek.
“Texas will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our state’s critical infrastructure through data-harvesting AI and social media apps,” Abbott said after the ban was announced. “To achieve that mission, I ordered Texas state agencies to ban Chinese government-based AI and social media apps from all state issued devices.”
“State agencies and employees responsible for handling critical infrastructure, intellectual property, and personal information must be protected from malicious espionage operations by the Chinese Communist Party,” Abbott continued. “Texas will continue to protect and defend our state from hostile foreign actors.”
The order from Abbott is an extension on a bill passed in 2022 to ban TikTok from all government devices. While these companies claim that any data they collect is inaccessible to the Chinese government, the ways businesses are structured in China make that impossible. RedNote and DeepSeek are both apps run by Chinese-owned companies that gained significant popularity in January.
RedNote was downloaded in mass in the middle of the month as millions of TikTok users sought an alternative to the platform that was going dark. While President Donald Trump delayed the ban on TikTok, causing it to become available roughly 24 hours after it shut down, many are still using RedNote having found the experience of being on the app enjoyable.
READ MORE: WAIT…TIKTOK ISN’T BANNED? WHAT TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER MEANS FOR PLATFORM
Meanwhile, DeepSeek is an AI chatbot released last week that shook up the entire tech world. Its release led to chipmaker Nvidia’s stock dropping roughly $600 billion, the worst single day for any stock ever. Tests have shown that the chatbot matches or outperforms the best AIs built by U.S. companies, such as ChatGPT. Furthermore, the creators of DeepSeek claim to have built the model at a fraction of the price on servers with significantly less processing power. These claims led to panic on Wall Street, but since then, investigations have revealed the company was not entirely telling the truth.
Nonetheless, DeepSeek has become a popular AI chatbot overnight, in part because it is open source, meaning it is completely free to use. The popularity of DeepSeek and RedNote prompted Abbott to ban them from government devices in order to protect any sensitive data that could otherwise end up in the hands of the Chinese government.
READ MORE: NEW LAWSUIT CHALLENGES TEXAS’ TIKTOK BAN