Steve Bellovin3d ago

I've been thinking about the FCC's insane new ban on foreign-made routers. Note the end of the BBC story at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74787w149zo:
"One exception to the general absence of US-made routers is the newer Starlink WiFi router. Starlink is part of Elon Musk's company SpaceX.

"The company says the Starlink routers are made in Texas."

And per the FCC's FAQ (https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-regarding-routers-produced-foreign-countries), even US-written software (or, I assume, open source software like OpenWRT) won't exempt foreign-made routers from the ban.

US bans new foreign-made consumer internet routers

There are almost no major brands of internet routers that are manufactured in the US.

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@SteveBellovin @SteveBellovin Well, they haven't banned foreign-made computers. So my minipc with 4 ports can continue to be my NAT/router/firewall.

I'm starting to think the real purpose of tariffs and product bans is to force citizens to buy only the products sold by the US billionaires. Turning the entire country into a company store.

Mar 24 at 4:48pmWeb