First, the Chinese people aren't spooky. That's not what I'm getting at. I think you know that, too.

Second, you can run it offline, but you aren't going to run the machine completely offline. You're going to have it on the internet. LLMs are probabilistic, not deterministic, programs. Evaluating them for what sort of security vulnerabilities they present - no matter what country made them - is still a fairly young field of information security, and isn't going to be as easy as evaluating a deterministic program.

Do I know for sure that there's some combination of states within a DeepSeek LLM that opens up an internet connection and sends information back to external servers? No. Do I know for sure that there's no combination of states within a DeepSeek LLM that opens up an internet connection and sends information back to external servers? Also no.

What I do know is that the People's Republic of China has an extensive history of offensive cyber operations against American and other Western computer networks. I also know that these efforts are likely ongoing.

Know who I don't have the same concerns about? Mistral.