CrowdStrike Research: Security Flaws in DeepSeek-Generated Code Linked to Political Triggers

CrowdStrike Research: Security Flaws in DeepSeek-Generated Code Linked to Political Triggers
November 20, 2025 | Stefan Stein

CrowdStrike Counter Adversary Operations identifies innocuous trigger words that lead DeepSeek to produce more vulnerable code.
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In January 2025, China-based AI startup DeepSeek (深度求索) released DeepSeek-R1, a high-quality large language model (LLM) that allegedly cost much less to develop and operate than Western competitors’ alternatives.

CrowdStrike Counter Adversary Operations conducted independent tests on DeepSeek-R1 and confirmed that in many cases, it could provide coding output of quality comparable to other market-leading LLMs of the time. However, we found that when DeepSeek-R1 receives prompts containing topics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likely considers politically sensitive, the likelihood of it producing code with severe security vulnerabilities increases by up to 50%.

This comes as absolutely no surprise to me.

This should be a lesson to all of us. AIs are not people. Their "intelligence", however you define the term, is a function of the data it was trained on. If you train it with corrupt and biased data, you will get corrupt and biased results.

Models from nation states that believe in using any and all means to take advantage of and corrupt (if not open wage war on) the rest of the world should not be trusted. It should be assumed that those models will generate output in support of their creators' national goals, just as if you had hired a government agent from that nation to do the work.

MacRumors: Apple Announces Plans to Begin Assembling Mac Mini in U.S. This Year

Apple Announces Plans to Begin Assembling Mac Mini in U.S. This Year
Monday February 23, 2026 7:44 pm PST by Joe Rossignol

Apple has announced that Foxconn will begin assembling some Mac mini computers at a factory in Houston, Texas later this year.

Great news. And, IMO, a decision influenced greatly by current US trade policies (in addition to China's abusive policies).

Fox Business: FBI warns US companies about Chinese tax software embedded with hidden malware

FBI warns US companies about Chinese tax software embedded with hidden malware
By Michael Ruiz. July 24, 2020

Weeks after a cybersecurity firm uncovered backdoor malware embedded in mandatory Chinese tax software, the FBI is reportedly warning U.S. companies doing business in China.

The software imposes a major security risk on victim companies – requiring them to use one of only two approved programs to pay their taxes – both of which have been found embedded with vulnerabilities, according to Trustwave, the cybersecurity firm.

Due to the comprimised security issues, the FBI sent out a warning Thursday to companies in the health care, chemical and finance industries, the technology news outlet ZDNet reported.

Quck summary. In order to do business in China, you are legally required to run certain specific software programs in order to pay Chinese taxes. This software is infected with malware, which installs backdoors into the computer, granting access to all of its files and all of its network connections. The data is being sent to unknown servers in China.

Tell me again, why companies continue to think it's a good idea to conduct business in China? You get cheap labor and the potential for Chinese sales in excahge for what? The Chinese government stealing all of your confidential data, including your trade secrets and financial information. Can anyone honestly claim that this is an acceptable cost?

Washington Free Beacon: YouTube Censors Criticism of China

YouTube Censors Criticism of China
Yuichiro Kakutani - May 26, 2020 6:30 PM

YouTube is deleting comments that contain two terms Chinese dissidents use to criticize the government, raising concerns about the tech industry's willingness to censor content to gain favor with the communist regime.

Comments on YouTube videos containing the terms 共匪 (Gòngfěi), meaning "communist bandit," and 五毛党 (wǔmáodǎng), meaning "fifty-cent party," are automatically deleted from the site shortly after they are posted. The latter is a derogatory term referring to Chinese internet censors who are allegedly paid 50 cents for every internet post that they erase.

A YouTube spokeswoman acknowledged to the Washington Free Beacon that the website's algorithm has been deleting any comments containing either of the two terms within seconds of their submission. She blamed "an error in our enforcement mechanism" for the deletions, rather than an effort to stymie criticism of the authoritarian government. The deletions have raised eyebrows among Republican lawmakers, one of whom is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate.

Does this come as a surprise to anyone?

I wonder if Google will allow me to post this or if they'll delete it too.

The Register: It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G

It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G
By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco, 25 Apr 2019 at 20:12

Let's cut the crap, El Reg style

Comment We thought the hype over next-generation mobile broadband networks couldn't get much thicker, but we were wrong. So let's just jump into the five biggest lies about 5G.

1. China is using the tech to spy on God-fearing Western nations
2. There is a "race to 5G"
3. 5G is ready to go now
4. 5G is the answer to all our broadband / fast internet needs
5. Spectrum auctions will solve all the issues

I've been saying some of this for some time now. Especially the first two. I listen to a lot of political news podcasts and people can't stop making insane claims that if Huawei sells a cell tower to Verizon that they will be able to listen in on every conversation and intercept every web session that crosses the tower (or in some more paranoid versions, over Verizon's entire network).

Even if they built in a "send all packets to China" feature, and somehow managed to turn it on without Verizon's NOC noticing that the amount of traffic has instantly doubled, how is this any less secure than using public Wi-Fi in a restaurant? The answer is that it isn't. Which is why every web site and Internet service that cares about security (including your banks, e-mail services and social media sites) use encryption - that little "s" in https: isn't just for decoration.

Sure, maybe the Chinese want to fill their servers with thousands of terabytes of encrypted spam so they can spend the next decade decrypting it in order to learn a secret that, by the time they decode it, will have been all over the New York Times for several years. But I think they have better things to do.

Those people who are likely targets of espionage already need advanced security, with or without 5G. The fact that Huawei makes some equipment used by your cell carrier doesn't magically give them the ability to decrypt all the traffic flowing through that equipment.

That having been said, I am opposed to Huawei selling equipment to the US or anyone else. Not because they're going to take over the world, but simply because they shouldn't be allowed to profit from decades of intellectual property theft and massive government subsidies. Level the playing field by taking those away and I'll be happy to let them (try and) compete against Ericsson and Nokia.

All of that now having been said, there actually is a national security threat from Chinese network equipment like that from Huawei and ZTE. Not that they can intercept the world's communications, but that they could turn it off. They could build a hidden kill switch into their products that would probably not be detected. If a war should break out between China and some other nation, they could trigger that switch, disabling their enemy's entire communication network. I think that threat is plausible and should be taken seriously.

Could Ericsson or Nokia build in a kill switch? Sure they could, but since they are not owned by any government, the odds of them doing it on their own or in response to a government request is far lower than products built by companies that are subject to control by a foreign and hostile government.

AppleInsider: Huawei cloning Apple parts, rewarding employees for tech theft

Huawei cloning Apple parts, rewarding employees for tech theft
By Roger Fingas. Monday, February 18, 2019, 07:27 am PT (10:27 am ET)

In November, a Huawei engineer heading up smartwatch development tracked down a supplier that helps build the Apple Watch's heart rate sensor, The Information said. The person arranged a meeting with the claim he could offer a manufacturing contract, but instead probed for details about the Apple Watch, an anonymous executive at the supplier said.

The engineer was accompanied by four researchers, and together the group is said to have spent an hour and a half asking about the Watch. With nothing given Huawei went silent.

Huawei has reportedly used similar tactics against companies like Cisco, Motorola, and Akhan Semiconductor. The U.S. Justice Department in fact claims that Huawei has a program that rewards employees for stealing data, with better bonuses based on how confidential information is.

This should come as no surprise, given the fact that the Chinese government has been stealing military and technology secrets for decades. And an important reason why nobody should buy Huawei equipment. Getting something for a low price should not be enough justification to reward theft.