Americans with a desire to upgrade their routers might just need to hold tight for a little, and hope their hardware holds out as long as it can, because the US government is changing the rules.
A new notice set out by the country’s authority on the matter, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has decreed that routers made outside of the US now “pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons”.
In short, the US government believes that routers made outside the country now pose a security risk to America.
This is a bit of a surprise, largely because America doesn’t really manufacturer routers and networking gear. Most gear is made in China, and while the US government has clearly blocked some Chinese companies from using American technologies in the past (see Huawei as an example), it’s unusual to see any foreign hardware maker blocked from a category where the host country (US) doesn’t actually have a lot of hardware in.
As it is, China is estimated to produce the networking hardware for at least 60 percent of American households rely on. That’s well over half the country.
While this technically only applies to new hardware, it’s a little like blocking all stores from selling produce grown in a different country when your own country doesn’t actually grow much of what it sells.
It feels like an own goal, where something silly is about to befoul its population, as new hardware will be blocked from sale. There won’t be a heap of upgrades for Americans after the latest in routers and WiFi, it seems.
Why is this happening?
In terms of why this is happening, right now, the logic for the FCC is one of security, namely that:
“…malicious state and non-state sponsored cyber attackers have increasingly leveraged the vulnerabilities in small and home office routers produced abroad to carry out direct attacks against American civilians in their homes.”
For the FCC, that apparently means someone is breaking into routers produced outside of the country, and using them to attack infrastructure, transportation, and other areas, including civilian routers.
If this reason is legitimate, it’s difficult to imagine why this isn’t being applied to current hardware. The ensuing logistical nightmare would be an absolute disaster, sure, but the FCC sites specific cyberattacks which would likely be using existing hardware rather than anything new.
Routers could also just be a part of the cyberattack puzzle. It could also be other pieces of hardware, other forms of software, or just security processes that aren’t entirely secure. It could even technically happen to hardware produced in the US.
However, the critical problem from this new ruling may stem from the fact that almost no networking hardware is made in the US. It might be owned by American companies, but owning it is very different from producing and making it.
Most companies make their gear in China, Japan, Korean, Taiwan, or Vietnam, and that includes the likes of Asus, D-Link, Google’s Nest, Amazon’s Eero, Linksys, Netgear, TP-Link, and others. Even Apple’s now retired AirPort wireless networking hardware was made in China.
Based on this new ruling, very few of the new routers would come to American store shelves, at least not while it’s active. Current models wouldn’t be affected, but new models would have a problem, meaning new WiFi 7 routers may miss out, and potentially even the first batch of WiFi 8 devices, if they’re due to arrive this year.
Will this rule change affect Australia?
While Pickr is primarily an Australian website, some of these unusual rules can affect what comes into the country.
For instance, when Huawei was banned from accessing Google Android back in 2019, we still saw Huawei phones, but their use was hamstrung because of the operating system Huawei was forced to use.
This rule is a little less likely to affect Australia. It doesn’t prohibit Australian organisations from using internationally-produced networking hardware, nor does it stop them from selling it.
Australians are still very likely to see new internationally made routers this year, even if Americans don’t. This is one rule Australians won’t have to worry about, unless the Australian government steps in, and that seems unlikely.
Most hardware in Australia is produced elsewhere, so this doesn’t seem like much of an issue locally at all.
But it could be an issue for releases in America, and may mean that new networking devices are delayed or needing an exemption, either until they can be made in the US or these new rules are challenged.
