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

Decided to launch a daily Silicon Valley TV show quote of the day. Today’s selection for absolutely no particular reason:

“Well, that’s the thing about the NDA, is that the NDA is actually covered under the NDA. So if I told you about the NDA, it would’ve been a violation of the NDA.”

I want to highlight two fun bits from this week’s episode of @atpfm https://atp.fm/683

First, we put the “hands on” into our very touchy-feely report about the MacBook Neo (starts at 24:00)

https://overcast.fm/+BQnv4MC0jU/24:00

But the real star of the episode is @marcoarment’s amazing story of how he, as a lone developer, created a transcripts feature for @overcastfm to compete with the similar feature in Apple Podcasts. You do not want to miss this one. (starts at 54:46)

https://overcast.fm/+BQnv4MC0jU/54:46

When I started in security, one of the prevailing attitudes was "The weakest link in the chain will always be the human."

I would like to thank every LLM provider and startup for changing this paradigm by introducing a much weaker link in the chain.

You know what WON’T get stuck in the Strait of Hormuz?

Solar and wind energy