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The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Technology
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To be honest, this is probably justified. My knee-jerk reaction was "oh look, USA in antagonizing everyone else again", but consumer routers are a really significant security junction which historically has always been somewhat neglected. I only read a few sentences before the paywall stopped me, but sounds like they'll whitelist any foreign manufacturers that are legitimate.
Yes, it's gonna have corruption and bribes all over it.. But on paper, it's justified.
The vulnerability is coming from inside the house
What? Because companies from other countries are evil? What makes you think that companies in your own country are better?
Why does the country even matter?
It's just another routine fascist strategy:
I'm not from the US. And I think the way they're trying to tackle it is stupid, roughly for the reasons you say. But on a surface level it's good that there is some action taken on this matter.
The country does matter. It allows oversight and regulation to a greater extent. And if it turns out that there's a backdoor in a router, if it's made locally there will be someone to criminally charge, whereas if it's made in China or wherever, that would be impossible.
Then again, it's the US, so they'd probably charge some random worker instead of the CEO who demanded the back door be implemented.
What kind of oversight are you talking about? Locally produced items do not need to fulfill more regulations.
If this was about cyber security there would be a mandatory certification (like there is for emc, like the FCC). But blanket statements like „foreign company bad!“ don’t do anything for increasing cyber security
Yeah, items are licensed according to where they’re sold, not made. “More oversight” makes no sense.
I hope things like hardware made by/for openwrt remain available, but it sounds like they will cease to be?
My first thought was the risk of the us demanding us manufacturers include a backdoor
It sounds like the exemption for foreign companies is an option while they create plans for american manufacturing
It seems like professional equipment will not be affected:
That's not reassuring. It sounds like they don't want home users to be able to get any router they could manage themselves.
nail ~~on~~ in the head
I'm not sure their like bananapi based router would be considered professional. More home tinkerer
I'm not sure what that'll mean for the impact of this change, but I guess we'll see 🤷🏻♂️
You're right, but simply shifting the production from overseas to US doesn't inherently make the routers more secure. The article mentions the lack of software updates for discontinued products as a big threat that has been exploited in the past.
Fortunately, there is no paywall for me. Here is the article on archive.org.
No, the article mentions only one exception: