Moolenaar: Nvidia Products Used by DeepSeek, People's Liberation Army

United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party
January 29, 2026
Press Release

Chairman John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on China sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick outlining how Nvidia products were used by CCP-backed AI company DeepSeek and then procured by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). In the letter, Moolenaar details how documents produced to the committee reveal Nvidia's technical support of an AI model utilized within PLA systems and reiterates the need to ensure exported chips are not used to advance China’s military capabilities. 

"While NVIDIA asserts its relationship with DeepSeek is 'to promote the [AI] ecosystem flywheel and improve NVIDIA’s products,' documents produced to the Committee reveal NVIDIA provided extensive technical support that enabled DeepSeek —now integrated into People’s Liberation Army (PLA) systems and a demonstrated cyber security risk—to achieve frontier AI capabilities. These findings demonstrate why rigorous enforcement of the Department’s H200 export rule, which requires certification that chips will not serve military purposes, is essential—even if such enforcement effectively prevents H200 exports to the PRC altogether," begins Moolenaar in the letter. 

"As the Committee detailed in its April 2025 report, DeepSeek is not a typical commercial AI system: it routes Americans’ data back to the PRC through infrastructure tied to a U.S.-designated Chinese military company, manipulates outputs to comply with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda and censorship mandates, steals intellectual property from frontier U.S. AI firms, and runs on advanced NVIDIA chips restricted from export to China," he continues. 

The letter concludes with two recommendations to better protect U.S. national security:

  • Clarification of H200 restrictions to include measures that would effectively and reliably prevent prohibited end users from gaining the type of access the PLA gained from DeepSeek. 
  • Tighter restrictions on PRC-origin AI models to address the risks posed by using AI models developed by PRC entities such as DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Tencent in the United States. 

Read the full letter here.