The decision follows years of escalating attacks against the U.S. from state-linked threat groups targeting routers and edge devices.
The determination follows rising concerns in recent years that foreign adversaries, particularly China, were exploiting critical vulnerabilities and poor security configurations to launch espionage and other malicious attacks.
“I think it’s clear that consumer routers produced by foreign adversaries or foreign countries of concern do pose severe national security risks,” Jack Burnham, analyst for the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Cybersecurity Dive.
However, Burnham cautioned that it has yet to be determined whether such a maximalist prohibition of new consumer-grade routers will fully solve the security problem.
Router manufacturers will be able to apply for conditional approval from the Defense and Homeland Security departments, according to the FCC. Many of the routers developed by Chinese manufacturers are not actually produced on the Chinese mainland and are sold through joint ventures and partnerships with companies in other parts of the world, Burnham noted.
The recent focus on routers has been linked to the rise of state-linked threat groups, including Volt Typhoon , Flax Typhoon and Salt Typhoon. Much of the malicious activity linked to these adversaries has included exploitation of critical flaws in consumer routers.
Millions of Americans work from remote homes or small businesses and are regularly accessing IT networks at major U.S. companies and government agencies.
Beginning in 2023, Microsoft researchers found that Volt Typhoon leveraged small office/ office routers and other edge devices to gain access to larger enterprise networks.
Lawmakers in 2025 urged the Trump administration to tighten restrictions around networking manufacturer TP Link over concerns around the security of their products.
A report released on Monday showed consumer-grade devices used in homes and small businesses accounted for half of the vulnerabilities found in networking equipment.
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