Gov. Rhoden says move made in effort to ‘defend South Dakota citizens from evil foreign governments’
PIERRE, S.D. – TikTok isn’t the only Chinese application that South Dakota state employees can’t use.
This week, Gov. Larry Rhoden and the Bureau of Information and Telecommunications (BIT) banned DeepSeek and RedNote on state devices.
RedNote is a social media platform owned by Xingyin Information Technology Ltd. The app rose in popularity in the United States in January due to the anticipated ban of TikTok. DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company that develops large language models and is similar to ChatGPT.
Former Gov. Kristi Noem signed EO 2023-06 in May 2023, which allowed the Commissioner of BIT to ban any other application, website, platform, service or product whose use or access would be detrimental to state security.
The bans extend to the use of the apps on state devices and state employees’ use on their own 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.”
Find a complete list of banned applications on state devices here.
