DeepSeek's Hidden Agenda: The AI Threat No One Saw Coming

February 16, 2025

Welcome back! Another Friday, another lap in the race to stay resilient — and this week, the AI arms race just got personal.

While everyone's been focused on AI productivity gains, China's been playing a different game — and your data might be the prize. Plus, open-source security gets a $100M wake-up call that you can't ignore.

Let's dive in before your next AI tool becomes someone else's intelligence asset.

China’s AI Trojan Horse: DeepSeek’s Hidden Agenda Puts Your Data at Risk

Think you're just getting another AI productivity tool? Think again. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company gaining rapid traction in U.S. businesses, has been found to contain code that interacts with China Mobile—a state-owned telecom already banned in the U.S. for national security concerns.

This isn't just another data privacy story. It’s a wake-up call about the hidden cost of rushing into AI adoption without asking the hard questions first.

What's Really Going On?

  • Security researchers found code in DeepSeek’s chatbot that interacts with China Mobile, raising concerns about potential data exposure.

  • The company's expansion into Western markets highlights growing risks around AI supply chains.

  • China is aggressively expanding its AI footprint, increasing scrutiny over AI-driven data flows.

The bottom line: Your AI tools might be sending more than just queries back to their servers.

Why You Should Be Paying Attention

Your organization is probably already using multiple AI tools. Each one is a potential risk if you haven’t vetted it properly. This isn’t paranoia—it’s the new reality of AI security. When your employees input company data into an AI tool, do you know where that data really goes?

Time to Take Control

Map Your AI Exposure

  • Audit every AI tool in your environment—even the free ones your team is "just trying out."

  • Track what data types are being fed into these systems.

  • Document which tools have access to internal systems or login credentials.

Lock Down Your AI Supply Chain

  • Implement an AI vendor assessment process that includes:

    • Data residency verification

    • Security compliance checks

    • Code review requirements for direct integrations

  • Create clear policies about what data can and can't be shared with AI tools.

Build Your AI Security Moat

  • Deploy monitoring tools to detect unauthorized AI tool usage.

  • Implement data loss prevention (DLP) specifically for AI interactions.

  • Train your team on safe AI usage practices—make it part of your security awareness program.

Headlines For the Fast Lane

The World Economic Forum isn't known for hyperbole, which makes their warning about AI-driven cyber threats even more alarming. Most organizations are still playing catch-up while attackers are already leveraging AI at scale.

📌 Why It Matters: AI is expanding the attack surface, making cyberattacks faster, smarter, and harder to detect. Organizations must adapt now to stay ahead.

Recent cyberattack trends indicate hackers are weaponizing AI models, including advanced chatbots, to craft highly targeted phishing campaigns that bypass traditional defenses.

📌 Why It Matters: If AI is automating cyberattacks, organizations must upgrade their defenses faster than ever.

A breach at PowerSchool exposed sensitive data across 85 school districts, highlighting the risks of weak links in supply chain security.

📌 Why It Matters: If schools can’t secure their systems, businesses should take this as a wake-up call.

Juniper Networks reported better-than-expected Q4 results, driven by demand for AI-driven networking solutions. The company posted $1.4 billion in revenue, surpassing Wall Street estimates.

📌 Why It Matters: AI infrastructure is a major growth area, and networking companies like Juniper are playing a key role in supporting the next generation of AI workloads.

The Next Wave: Open-Source Security Gets Serious

While you're watching the AI landscape, don't sleep on this: Semgrep just landed $100M to tackle the open-source security crisis. Why should you care? Because your applications are probably 80% open source, and each line of that code is a potential vulnerability.

The Real Impact

  • Semgrep’s latest funding underscores the growing demand for automated security scanning.

  • Open-source security is no longer optional—investors are betting big on this space.

  • Enterprise adoption of automated code scanning is about to become the new normal.

Your Next Moves

Start with an open-source inventory—you can’t secure what you don’t know about.

Implement automated scanning in your CI/CD pipeline.

Set up policies for open-source usage and regular security reviews.

The AI arms race isn’t on the horizon—it’s here. While you evaluate AI for productivity, your adversaries are already weaponizing it against you. Every moment spent debating adoption is a moment they spend exploiting vulnerabilities. In this race, second place means compromised data, breached systems, and lost trust.

There’s no silver medal in cybersecurity.

Don’t just adapt. Accelerate.

// IT Pit Chief