Reading the tea leaves, directing a young person to "learn Chinese" is probably good advice.

To the larger point . . .

At the time of writing, all deepseek or qwen models AFAIK are de facto prohibited in defense contracting, including local machine deployments via Ollama or similar. Although no legislative or executive mandate yet exists [1], it's perceived as a gap [2], and contracts are already including language for prohibition not just in the product but in any part of the software development environment.

The attack surface for a (non-agentic) model running in local ollama is basically non-existent . . but, eh . . I do get it, at some level. While they're not l33t haXX0ring your base, the models are still largely black boxes, can move your attention away from things, or towards things, with no one being the wiser. "Landing Craft? I see no landing craft". This would boil out in test, ideally, but hey, now you know how much time your typical defense subcon spends in meaningful software testing[3].

[1] See also OMB Memorandum M-25-22 (preference for AI developed and produced in the United States), NIST CAISI assessment of PRC-origin AI models as "adversary AI" (September 2025), and House Select Committee on the CCP Report (April 16, 2025), "DeepSeek Unmasked".

[2] Overall, rather than blacklist, I'd recommend a "whitelist" of permitted models, maintained dynamically. This would operate the same way you would manage libraries via SSCG/SSCM (software supply chain governance/management) . . but few if any defense subcons have enough onboard savvy to manage SSCG let alone spooling a parallel construct for models :(. Soooo . . ollama regex scrubbing it is.

[3] i.e. none at all, we barely have the ability to MAKE anything like software, given the combination of underwhelming pay scales and the fact defense companies always seem to have a requirement for on-site 100% in some random crappy town in the middle of BFE. If it wasn't for the downturn in tech we wouldn't have anyone useful at all, but we snagged some silcon refugees.

However, since I am Korean, I am not in a position to take work from American defense contractors. Still, your analysis is very interesting to me.

I am also a factory/industrial software developer in Korea, and the situation feels somewhat similar. Many developers are leaving factory software work because of the travel burden and the heavy responsibility. If the system fails to operate correctly, there can even be penalties. I am still doing this work because I need the money, but it is interesting that American defense contracting and Korean factory software seem to behave in somewhat similar ways.

Recently, I was also told that using Chinese models such as DeepSeek is prohibited for some products that go into factories. So at the government-related level, this seems to be restricted, though I am not sure how things are handled in the private sector. From what I can see, private companies still seem to use them.

In any case, your comment was very interesting. You pointed out something I had been missing. Thanks to you, I now have many things to think about. Thank you for the thoughtful comment.