PIERRE, S.D. – On March 4th, Governor Larry Rhoden and the South Dakota Bureau of Information and Telecommunications (BIT) banned the Chinese applications DeepSeek and RedNote pursuant to Executive Order 2023-06. This action was taken for the security of South Dakotans’ personal information against the threat of the Chinese Communist Party, which the State of South Dakota has designated as an “Evil Foreign Government.”

“My Administration will continue to defend South Dakota citizens from Evil Foreign Governments, including the Chinese Communist Party. Banning RedNote and DeepSeek is a necessary step to protect our IT systems and keep South Dakota strong, safe, and free,” said Governor Larry Rhoden. “My administration will proactively identify, monitor, and respond to cybersecurity threats across the state.”

Former Governor Noem signed EO 2023-06 in May 2023, which gave the Commissioner of BIT the power to ban any other application, website, platform, service, or product whose use or access would be detrimental to state security. Similar to the bans on Bytedance and Tencent, this ban extends to both use on state devices and state employees’ use on their personal devices while on state time.

“Both RedNote and DeepSeek pose significant security risks to the State of South Dakota,” said Madhu Gottumukkala, Commissioner of BIT. “By prohibiting these applications, we are taking decisive action to protect the state's sensitive data and critical infrastructure from potential exploitation by malicious entities. We remain committed to strengthening the state’s cybersecurity defenses through proactive monitoring and risk mitigation.”

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company. RedNote is a Chinese social media app and e-commerce platform that serves as an alternative to TikTok.

The Commissioner of the Bureau of Information and Telecommunications keeps a publicly accessible list of banned entities, which you can find here.