Whoa, that escalated quickly. This just got sent out by the press folks at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC says it has decided that all foreign-made consumer-grade Internet routers are henceforth prohibited from receiving FCC authorization and are therefore prohibited from being imported for use or sale in the United States.
"Update Follows Determination by Executive Branch Agencies that Consumer-Grade Routers Produced in Foreign Countries Threaten National Security
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2026—Today, the Federal Communications Commission updated its Covered List to include all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries. Routers are the boxes in every home that connect computers, phones, and smart devices to the internet. This followed a determination by a White House-convened Executive Branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise that such routers “pose unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons.”
"The Executive Branch determination noted that foreign-produced routers (1) introduce “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and (2) pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”
"This action does not affect any previously-purchased consumer-grade routers. Consumers can continue to use any router they have already lawfully purchased or acquired."
"Producers of consumer-grade routers that receive Conditional Approval from DoW or DHS can continue to receive FCC equipment authorizations. Interested applicants are encouraged to submit applications to [email protected]."
Not sure how many consumer-grade routers will be left for sale if it really is a ban on approvals for any foreign-made consumer routers like they said, and not just a bunch of already restricted Chinese makers like Huawei and ZTE.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-covered-list-include-foreign-made-consumer-routers
FCC's "covered list" of "thou shalt not entities": https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist
This is amazing. DHS bought a warehouse in a city called Social Circle, Georgia. When the city council asked DHS how they planned to use the warehouse, DHS refused to answer.
So, the city cut off water and sewer services and put a lock on the water meter, and said that services will remain off “until ICE indicates how water and sewer to the facility will be served without exceeding the limited infrastructure capacity.”
Outstanding. We need more of this! This is how we stop fascism.
Important research and documentation that businesses that profit from consumer data collection are lobbying governments to mandate age verification:
"Meta Platforms: Lobbying, Dark Money, and the App Store Accountability Act
An open-source intelligence investigation into how Meta Platforms built a multi-channel influence operation to pass age verification laws that shift regulatory burden from social media platforms onto Apple and Google's app stores."
https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
#osint #privacy #opensource #lobbying #ageverificationlaw #security
That's part of what makes a capital strike non-obvious, if you don't already know what it looks like. It's not just sitting on the money and refusing to spend it. Because that's the one thing you literally can't do with capital. If you leave those resources idle, especially labor, it just goes and does its own thing. You lose control over it. If you just fire everyone, they eventually start working for themselves.
So, to conduct a capital strike, you have to direct the capital toward useless things. Or actually destructive things, if you can manage it.
And thus, AI had "basically zero" effect on the GDP. Because it's economically worthless activity for the purpose of keeping all the resources occupied so they can't be put to any other use.
The best advice I have for new nerds: Refuse to pay rent.
Don't subscribe. Don't lease. Don't use their cloud. Don't slip down the freemium slope. Don't create accounts on their services.
Buy it once. Run it local. Avoid commercial software.
It'll be a huge pain and you'll be an outsider but it'll be endless, interesting, and hard fun that'll pay you back with a curious mind and an understanding of the fabric of our intellectual infrastructure that will make you light-years more capable, useful, and healthy than the "AI" zombies.
“I’m one of these people who’s very anti-’robot rights,’ as it were, because I believe it’s essentially a degradation of human rights. It doesn’t elevate robots to the same status as humans, it degrades humans to the same status as robots. And I think we should always, when we’re looking at these machines, treat them as what are, which is avatars of capital. You’re not being nice to a conscious being if you help a robot cross the street; you are helping capital in some way.”
–James Vincent, speaking to @parismarx on this week’s ’Tech Won’t Save Us.’
Vincent was addressing physical, embodied robots, but I think this obviously also applies to #AI generally.
https://www.techwontsave.us/episode/316_whats_driving_the_push_for_humanoid_robots_w_james_vincent