FCC Bans Foreign Wi-Fi Routers Over Chinese Hacking Concerns — What Router Owners Need to Know
Your Wi-Fi router has been sending data somewhere — and the FCC just confirmed it.
Late Monday, the Federal Communications Commission dropped a bombshell: all foreign-made Wi-Fi routers are now banned from sale in the United States. Not just Chinese brands. ALL foreign routers.
The reason? According to a White House national security determination issued Friday, routers manufactured outside the US have “potential built-in backdoors” that foreign actors are actively exploiting. The FCC specifically cited Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups using consumer routers to launch the Volt, Flax, and Salt Typhoon cyberattacks that targeted American telecommunications infrastructure.
Here’s what most people don’t realize: the router sitting in your living room right now is likely made in China, Taiwan, or Vietnam. TP-Link, Netgear, Asus, Linksys — nearly every major brand manufactures overseas. And according to the federal government, those supply chains are compromised.
The ban doesn’t affect routers you already own — you can keep using them. But it blocks any NEW foreign-made router models from hitting the market unless the manufacturer gets special approval from the Pentagon or Department of Homeland Security. To get that exemption, companies have to explain why they’re not making routers in America and submit a “time-bound plan” to move manufacturing to US soil.
The FCC’s order doesn’t provide evidence of a specific deliberate backdoor in existing products. But it does acknowledge that Chinese hackers have been exploiting vulnerabilities in these devices for years — vulnerabilities the manufacturers may have known about.
So while the government says your current router is fine to keep using, they’re also saying the next generation of foreign routers poses “an unacceptable risk to US national security.” Which raises an obvious question: if the new ones are too dangerous to sell, why are the old ones safe to keep plugged in?