FCC Blocks Import of All New Foreign-Made Home Routers

The United States has periodically wielded trade rules to police perceived security threats—think of the 1987 Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal that barred certain Japanese electronics, or the 2019 entity-list action against Huawei’s 5G gear. The 2026 router ban fits the same techno-nationalist arc: Washington is substituting origin-based restrictions for device-specific risk vetting, accelerating a shift toward industrial on-shoring last seen at scale during WWII’s War Production Board. In doing so, it stretches the definition of 'critical infrastructure' from missile guidance systems to living-room Wi-Fi, signaling that ubiquitous consumer hardware is now treated as a battlespace. Over a 100-year horizon this moment could mark either a blip—quickly relaxed once new security standards emerge—or the cementing of a bifurcated Internet supply chain, echoing the 1949–1989 CoCom regime that walled off Eastern Bloc tech for four decades. Whether it actually hardens U.S. cyber defenses or mainly raises costs will depend on long-term success in building domestic manufacturing capacity and on China’s countermoves in other interconnected sectors.