This week we talk about modems, WiFi, and kinda sorta bribes.

We also discuss Huawei, government subsidies, and the FCC.

Recommended Book: Replaceable You by Mary Roach

Transcript

Many homes, those with WiFi connections to the internet, have two different devices they use to make that connectivity happen.

The first is a modem, which is what connects directly to your internet service provider, often via an ethernet jack in the wall that connects to a series of cables webbed throughout your city.

The second is a router, which plugs into the modem and then spreads that signal, derived from that network of city-wide cables around your home, either by splitting that single ethernet jack into multiple ethernet jacks, allowing multiple devices to plug into that network, or by creating a wireless signal, WiFi, that multiple devices can connect to wirelessly in the same way. Many routers will have both options, though in most homes and for most modern devices, WiFi tends to be the more common access point because of its convenience, these days.

That WiFi signal, and the connection provided via those additional ethernet ports on the router, create what’s called a Local Area Network of devices, or LAN. This local area network allow these devices—your phone and your laptop, for instance—to connect to each other directly, but its primary role for most people is using that connection to the modem to grant these devices access the wider internet.

In addition to providing that internet access and creating the Local Area Network, connecting devices on that network to each other, routers also usually provide a layer of security to those devices. This can be done via firewalls and with encryption, which is important as unprotected networks can leave the devices plugged into them vulnerable to outside attack. That means if the router is breached or in some other way exploited, a whole company’s worth of computers, or all your local devices at home, could be made part of a botnet, could be held hostage by ransomware, or could be keylogged until you provide login information for your banks or other seemingly secure accounts to whomever broke into that insufficiently protected LAN.

What I’d like to talk about today is a recently announced ban on some types of routers in the US, the reasoning behind this ban, and what might happen next.

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On March 23, 2026, the US Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on the import of all new consumer-grade routers not made in the United States.

This ban does not impact routers that are already on the market and in homes, so if you have one already, you’re fine. And if you’re buying an existing model, that should be fine, too.

It will apply to new routers, though, and the rationale provided by the FCC with the announcement is that imported routers are a “severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt US critical infrastructure.”

They also cited recent, major hacks like Salt Typhoon, saying that routers brought into the US provided a means of entry for some components of those attacks.

This stated concern is similar to the one that was at the center of the Trump administration’s 2019 ban of products made by Chinese tech company Huawei in the United States. Huawei made, and still makes, all kinds of products, including consumer-grade smartphones, and high-end 5G equipment sold to telecommunications companies around the world for use in their infrastructure.

The concern was that a company like Huawei might leverage its far better prices, which were partly possible because of backing from the Chinese government, to put foreign competitors out of business. From there, they could dominate these industries, while also getting their equipment deep in the telecommunications infrastructure of the US and US allies. Then, it would be relatively easy to insert spy equipment and eavesdrop on phone calls and data transmissions from phones, or to incorporate kill-switches into these grids, so if China ever needed to, for instance, distract the US and its allies while they invaded Taiwan, they could just push a button, kill the US telecommunications grid, and that would buy them some time and fog of war to do what they wanted to do without immediate repercussions; and undoing a successful invasion would be a million times more difficult than stepping in while it’s happening to prevent it.

As of 2024, Huawei still controlled about a third of the global 5G market. It controlled about 27.5% back in 2019, the year it was banned in the US and in many US allied nations, so while it’s possible they could have grown even bigger than that had the ban not been implemented, they still grew following its implementation.

Chinese companies currently control about 60% of the US router market, and it’s likely the local, US market will shift, reorienting toward US makers over the next decade or so. But it’s possible these Chinese companies will grow their global footprint even further, as previous US bans have pushed them into different, less exploited markets, and that’s resulted in a wider footprint for such companies, even if their profits may drop a little after leaving the spendier US market.

There’s also a pretty good chance we’ll see deals to move more manufacturing to the US, which could allow some of these companies to make relatively small changes to their operations in order to bypass the ban entirely.

This seems extremely likely, at least in the short term, as all major players in the US router market fall under the FCC’s definition of not being entirely US owned and operated, and making consumer-grade routers that are designed or manufactured outside the US. Even the ostensibly more US companies, based and founded here, make their stuff primarily in Southeast Asia; so even those companies would seem to fall afoul of this new rule.

The FCC has also given these companies the opportunity to apply for what’s called Conditional Approval from the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, which would require they give a bunch of details about their company and products to these entities, along with plans to manufacture more stuff in the US, and these departments can then give them permission to keep selling in the meantime.

It’s worth mentioning here that this kind of set up has previously given foreign entities a chance to funnel money into President Trump’s properties and businesses, before then speaking with him or one of his representatives and coming to some kind of agreement, the President then instructing the relevant agencies or departments to let those companies through, the ban not applying to them or not applying in the same way.

There are concerns that such bans basically operate as requests for bribes, in other words, and those who don’t pay up see their customer base dwindle in the US market, while those who do get away with a slap on the wrist so long as they promise to make more stuff in the US at some point—though they’re not really held to that promise in any concrete way, and often that’s where their efforts stop, at the announcement of such changes.

Also worth mentioning is that it’s not clear why this applies only to consumer-grade routers, as it would seem like the industrial- and military-grade ones would be of even greater concern, at least based on the claims made by the FCC when announcing this ban.

We also don’t know why it’s being applied to new models, but not models currently being sold, and not those already in our homes; all of which would seem to be just as vulnerable as newer models that haven’t made it to the market yet.

There’s a chance those details will follow, and there’s also a chance, again, that this is more about the administration maybe accumulating promises from foreign companies to move manufacturing to the US, because that looks good in an election year, and it’s maybe another means of accumulating bribes from companies that would find it far cheaper to make contributions to organizations the President either controls or favors, than to build new manufacturing capacity in the US, or leave the market entirely.

Show Notes

https://www.theverge.com/tech/899906/fcc-router-ban-march-2026-explainer

https://archive.is/20260326232922/https://www.theverge.com/tech/899906/fcc-router-ban-march-2026-explainer

https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/i-review-routers-for-a-living-dont-buy-a-router-right-now/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_(computing)

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-covered-list-include-foreign-made-consumer-routers

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/fcc-banning-imports-new-chinese-made-routers-citing-security-concerns-2026-03-23/

https://www.wired.com/story/us-government-foreign-made-router-ban-explained/

https://itif.org/publications/2025/10/27/backfire-export-controls-helped-huawei-and-hurt-us-firms/

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