alt.hn

7/29/2026 at 10:47:57 AM

National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

 https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/robots-nsd.pdf

by ellingsworth

7/29/2026 at 11:41:23 AM

Ah, the newly popular "let's make the policy unusually broad and treat all foreign production as presumptively dangerous, regardless of country, manufacturer or security practices, this way we're more transparent about prioritizing a bribe rather than our stated concerns".

> Advanced robotic devices are inherently networked systems which creates broad attack surfaces and leaves them vulnerable to data exfiltration, remote disruption of the physical robot, and dependencies on unsecure over the air updates.

Good thing this isn't a concern in ones produced locally.

by revolvingthrow

7/29/2026 at 12:17:34 PM

I think this policy is another case of projection: "we" are doing this to other countries and we are afraid someone will do it back to us - which is both unfair and illegal.

by Tangurena2

7/29/2026 at 12:10:01 PM

> Good thing this isn't a concern in ones produced locally.

Local ones when not in use are doing the Pledge of Allegiance on a loop.

by ExoticPearTree

7/29/2026 at 1:55:18 PM

>Good thing this isn't a concern in ones produced locally.

It's not difficult to understand the folly of sharing data and control with your biggest adversary. It's so basic, but people chronically keep tripping on it, intentionally or not.

This isn't even something new either, it comes from the cold war where the KGB was excellent at espionage particularly because of their smart leverage of regular people with access to the right things. China isn't dumb either, and they're not sleeping on their treasure trove of Americans data.

So sorry you aren't going to get blackmailed instead of shown Toyota ads, but it's a pretty smart move that most with a geopolitical IQ above room temperature can easily grasp.

by WarmWash

7/29/2026 at 2:39:25 PM

> It's not difficult to understand the folly of sharing data and control with your biggest adversary. It's so basic, but people chronically keep tripping on it, intentionally or not.

Like those self driving, remotely controllable Teslas that gather data 24/7, the ones I saw everywhere when I was in China?

by lossolo

7/29/2026 at 2:48:19 PM

> Ah, the newly popular "let's make the policy unusually broad and treat all foreign production as presumptively dangerous, regardless of country, manufacturer or security practices, this way we're more transparent about prioritizing a bribe rather than our stated concerns".

IIRC, these policies are backdoor way to ban Chinese products without explicitly banning Chinese products (because the administration is trying to make nice with China). I've read stuff that said very explicitly that the foreign router ban was like that, and this seems similar.

by palmotea

7/29/2026 at 11:33:26 AM

The irony is this will harm US manufacturing, not help it. Manufacturing is the sector that most depends on robotics. Companies will now have to sue the administration so they can continue operations without this new regulatory hindrance. I thought this president was supposed to eliminate regulations, not impose newer and stupider ones.

by Lendal

7/29/2026 at 12:03:59 PM

I read somebody point out that the cold war roles have reversed. Now the US is protectionist and isolationist, and the likely eventual outcome will be the same for the US as it was for the USSR.

by InsideOutSanta

7/29/2026 at 11:58:15 AM

By sue you mean bribe to get an exception, correct?

by godwinson__4-8

7/29/2026 at 5:13:38 PM

> Companies will now have to sue

Yes, that is covered by Annex A titled "You have to sue". Which is interesting because longstanding law says the US cannot normally be sued. Surely you're not be hyperbolic.

by esbranson

7/29/2026 at 11:59:20 AM

In the 80s Brazil went that same path. They made a law forbidding everyone from importing computers. The idea was to "develop a national computer industry".

They created a monstrosity. The Brazilian made computers were always one generation behind the foreign ones (AT 286 was a "new" thing when every country was going into 386) and would cost 3 times more. Computers smuggled from Paraguay were everywhere, even I smuggled some.

The IT industry in Brazil became a cartel dominated by few companies. They'd pirate everything from the Americans, even DOS and all BIOS and firmware. Their computers' mainboards were ugly, hacked and defect prone. But they would give buckets of money to the military controlling the government and the corrupt politicians in Congress. The 80s became known as the "lost decade" because of the low growth induced by this policy.

This dumb idea expired in 1992.

by diego_moita

7/29/2026 at 12:05:40 PM

I though Brazil still has these weird tariffs on computers and high tech products in general - at least I've heard from some Brazilians that it's still making personal computing hardware far too expensive wioth little to no benefit to this day.

by m4rtink

7/29/2026 at 12:33:22 PM

Are phones an exception? I've heard Brazil is a very mobile-first market.

by giantg2

7/29/2026 at 12:35:26 PM

Yeah, they still have high tariffs. But back them it was just illegal to import computers. You'd need to request special authorization from the government to do so, and it would take months to get an authorization. And only a few reasons would be accepted (research, high-performance industrial automation, etc).

by diego_moita

7/29/2026 at 12:18:14 PM

What is Brazil's computer hardware industry like now? Are there any companies manufacturing in Brazil?

by tdeck

7/29/2026 at 12:36:31 PM

They're mostly assemblers of parts. They buy most parts from China and assemble the computers in the country.

by diego_moita

7/29/2026 at 11:43:36 AM

It will harm it even more by not subjecting it to competition, so it becomes bloated and uncompetitive like the US car and shipbuilding industries.

by logicchains

7/29/2026 at 11:46:26 AM

Sure, our technology is worse, but at least it's expensive.

by mapontosevenths

7/29/2026 at 12:39:58 PM

Oh, Intel is way ahead of the curve there, friend.

See: broken cablemodem chipsets, poor performing cellular modems, multiple generations of desktop ethernet adapters that don't work properly, uncompetitive processors in all but some very specific markets, CPUs that literally fry themselves to death because they couldn't keep up with AMD's advances so the just just kept cranking the voltage and clock speeds...Intel has been a bucket of Fail for a decade and a half.

And now the US government owns a not-too-shabby chunk of said Winning company thanks to a Very Stable Genius...

by KennyBlanken

7/29/2026 at 11:54:37 AM

This is just a false-flag campaign planted by the UAW to ensure the slovenly can keep their jobs another couple years instead of actually be held to task for poor American manufacturing build quality. ;)

by kotaKat

7/29/2026 at 11:59:44 AM

When you can't blame the machines, pretend the workers on the lowest rungs are machines and blame them instead.

by anticorporate

7/29/2026 at 11:58:43 AM

America doesn’t know how to do anything well aside from manipulate imaginary numbers.

Companies buying themselves over and over again.

How much of our so called economy is just moving money back and forth…

by 999900000999

7/29/2026 at 11:23:26 AM

> In response to this threat, the White House convened an executive branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise, see 47 U.S.C. § 1601(c)(1), comprising agencies that included appropriate national security agencies, id. § 1601(c)(4), which determined jointly and severally that: All foreign-produced advanced robotic devices pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons and should be included on the FCC’s Covered List, unless the Department of War (DOW) transmits to the FCC a specific determination that a given foreign-produced advanced robotic device, or a class of such devices, does not pose such risks. The interagency group and the agencies comprising it determined that foreign-produced advanced robotic devices presented the specific unacceptable risks of (a) posing a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt U.S. economic and national security, and (b) creating a cybersecurity risk that threatens the security of critical infrastructure and thus the safety and security of U.S. persons.

>

> To facilitate this transition period, entities that produce advanced robotic devices in a foreign country are encouraged to apply for Conditional Approvals (Annex A) which, if approved, will allow such producers to continue to receive FCC authorization for their products while they work to onshore manufacturing and address the U.S. government’s national security concerns described above.

by Georgelemental

7/29/2026 at 8:01:04 PM

Note that they also banned Chinese inverters at the same time. Industrial inverters are still made in the US but solar inverters are often made in China. So is this an attack on home solar and solar farms?

by rapjr9

7/29/2026 at 9:05:31 PM

Its an attack on solar in the aggregate, similar to how they're using DOE must run orders to keep coal plants generating needlessly.

by toomuchtodo

7/29/2026 at 11:38:02 AM

Amazingly ironic that the administration most deeply in bed to the finance sector's bidding is now identifying the result of the finance sector's 50 year push to offshore everything a problem for National security

by passwordoops

7/29/2026 at 12:32:30 PM

I remember a big push by business journals back in the 2000s with claims that "executives who offshore work get 18% greater bonuses than executives who don't".

by Tangurena2

7/29/2026 at 2:07:17 PM

Would love to see that report if you have a link

by AndrewKemendo

7/29/2026 at 11:48:05 AM

Is your definition of "finance sector" "everyone who likes money"?

by gowld

7/29/2026 at 11:41:20 AM

Why doesn't the U.S. simply ban all Chinese products that have an internet-connected computer in them? That would solve almost all security problems in one strike and force Chinese manufacturers to communicate via Bluetooth and update software through USB sticks or memory cards.

The apps communicating with said devices through Bluetooth obviously can't connect to the internet either otherwise there'd still be an avenue for subversion.

Just banning one Chinese product category at a time willy nilly doesn't help as there are a zillion other product categories of Chinese stuff with internet connections. From toys (with camera's in them), to refrigerators, power converters, microwaves, televisions to smartphones.

by hn_submit

7/29/2026 at 11:47:21 AM

Going one at a time, in small apparently myopic focus is how a politician shakes the lobbyist money tree. "You could be next!"

by bsenftner

7/29/2026 at 12:30:34 PM

There's a box being sold called "SuperBox". It claims to be able to stream any movie/video. The claim is "just pay $300 and you won't need to subscribe to any streaming service anymore." However, part of what it does is hacks your home network and tries to take over every thing on that network. And it sends this all back to China. The vast majority of people buying & installing these are just ordinary people but some will be executives, or people working for the feds. Did they bring their work laptop home and plug it in to their network? So it can get attacked outside the office firewall? Remember how stuxnet was spread?

This is a podcast about it: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/172/

by Tangurena2

7/29/2026 at 3:36:26 PM

I've always been suspicious why Chinese companies are adding internet capability to products where it doesn't make sense. Why would a power converter need internet capability? TCP/IP capability...maybe. But internet? Internet means "the whole world can access my device." Same with IP cameras. Or EV chargers.

And they require it. Without internet connectivity the device simply won't work. This sounds fishy to me.

These devices should only be allowed to access local network addresses and no (internet) gateways.

by hn_submit

7/29/2026 at 12:06:22 PM

Probably why you couldn't ban all at once...there'd be not much left.

by nono_ninja

7/29/2026 at 11:44:30 AM

Why does Ross, the largest Friend, not simply eat the other five?

by petesergeant

7/29/2026 at 12:05:45 PM

Removing an internet connection doesn't really solve much when you're talking about autonomous AI-driven robots with vision and hearing. It's a whole different category to toys, refrigerators, etc. My refrigerator isn't going to suddenly pick up a weapon and start attacking things on command. Nor does it have an easy way to receive instructions through side channels. I'm not saying I agree with Trump's policy - but removing internet isn't a solution either.

by jbstack

7/29/2026 at 1:29:44 PM

You have to realize that in a war China will use everything they can against us, including power converters (force a blackout), cars (drive-by-wire car will drive into a tree to kill a high ranking official), routers (disconnect the internet to make command and control difficult for our military). And a zillion other things.

A refrigerator could be forced to overheat and burn you house down killing you and your family. It may sound far fetched but if they believe it will help their cause they won't hesitate one second.

This issue needs to be solved once and for all NOW. Not piecemeal.

by hn_submit

7/29/2026 at 11:57:11 AM

i got a better solution. make open firmware and user flashing mandatory. if anyone can inspect the code for backdoors and replace it with brand new software then any security issues go out the window.

should apply to domestic products too for good measure.

by tancop

7/29/2026 at 12:46:16 PM

yea but they don't wanna do that

by functionmouse

7/29/2026 at 12:28:28 PM

There is a threat, but they are exaggerating it. Most of the advanced legged robots are glorified cameras and pack animals and are still in the research phases of implementation. Still, as someone who owns one of these, the amount of black-box software inside them is concerning. It's easy to chalk this up to intellectual property guarding, but who knows... I'd love to purchase *quality* domestically produced legged robots for research, but they are generally nonexistent. All this policy is going to do is hamper our efforts in research, which is a terrible idea if we want to produce a domestic supply chain. I'm sure they had absolutely 0% input from anyone who knows anything about robotics. Rather than this policy, why not simply require a full open source software stack?

by kjjohnsen

7/29/2026 at 3:37:00 PM

Regardless of how you feel about this, it would be good for humanoid robotics in the US to try to catch up a little more. What are they doing to positively encourage that?

by ilaksh

7/29/2026 at 12:08:59 PM

I hope there's a plan for local production in the US with all the banning of stuff right, left and center.

Soon they'll ban Colombian coffee for being too good and making people want more of it. Or who knows whatever else.

by ExoticPearTree

7/29/2026 at 12:37:08 PM

No plan would be a better alternative to than the plan the current craptocracy would come up with

by k12sosse

7/29/2026 at 3:57:51 PM

Access denied for me. Does "foreign-produced" include any country, even in EU?

by yurish

7/29/2026 at 11:54:34 AM

The true intention of all of these seems to mostly be to give the government justification to pick winners and losers. Anyone that bends the knee gets their carveout or special exception, anyone that doesn't gets hit with all sorts of restrictions on top of the randomly applied tariffs.

It seems the way to get Americans to embrace a centrally planned economy was to combine unashamed xenophobia with blatant corruption while calling it capitalism.

by hgoel

7/29/2026 at 2:22:00 PM

>The true intention of all of these seems to mostly be to give the government justification to pick winners and losers.

AlwaysHasBeen.jpg

You think the government kicked heavy industry out of the country (to China no less) because they truly believed in short sighted mid 20th century environmentalism? Of course not. They did it because Wall Street stood to make an obscene amount of money piecemeal selling that part of the economy overseas. Environmentalism just provided the excuse and pool of useful idiots from which to build political support.

by cucumber3732842

7/29/2026 at 11:50:19 AM

Why does department of defense, excuse me I mean the illegally named department of war aka cosplayer Hegseth’s wet dream, get put in charge of this? They are properly staffed to review thousands of robots? Hahaha.

by bix6

7/29/2026 at 11:54:36 AM

They can take bribes as effectively as any other department. Actual review of robots is presumably out of scope.

by brookst

7/29/2026 at 12:04:58 PM

I see a funny pattern here.

England created the Industrial Revolution but barely has any manufacturing these days.

The U.S. created several industries (mass car manufacturing, electronics, clothing, etc) but today China produces more than them. They had more than half the worlds' GDP in 1944, they have less than 16% today. They're slowly following England's path.

by diego_moita

7/29/2026 at 5:39:23 PM

That's the "Cantillon Effect"[1]

  Cantillon suggested that inflation occurs gradually and that the new supply of money has a localised effect on inflation, effectively originating the concept of non-neutral money. Furthermore, he posited that the original recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients. The concept of relative inflation, or a disproportionate rise in prices among different goods in an economy, is now known as the Cantillon effect.
Because we got very good at manufacturing, that brought in hard currency, and raised the standard of living. This then was balanced out by that money then being spend on goods from abroad that used to be sourced locally, hollowing out the manufacturing base. Until the base collapses, and reforms again elsewhere, and the cycle repeats.

If the US had competent leadership, they could re-shore things, and benefit from China's upcoming collapse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon#Monetary_the...

by mikewarot

7/29/2026 at 2:09:37 PM

It's just the path of economic development, and the benchmark for "comfortable life" is set by ambient economy of where you live.

So once the ambience reaches a level of "advanced degrees and massively leveraged worker impact" it becomes almost impossible to live in that environment on the level of "some school and hand knitting a scarf a day." It's totally intractable when you are competing with someone who generates a scarf of value every 30 seconds.

by WarmWash

7/29/2026 at 12:20:40 PM

China has 4x the population of the US, so it's not exactly odd that they would produce more than the US.

by tdeck

7/29/2026 at 11:31:54 AM

This makes me wonder if we've ever had any evidence that "onshore manufacturing" prevents or even lessens foreign backdoors or security vulnerabilities. Honestly, to me it seems like onshore manufacturers are generally far more clueless than they have any right to be, so it's highly unlikely that they could both write materially better code and act as any meaningful barrier to internal compromise.

by LoganDark

7/29/2026 at 1:44:41 PM

Apple is a case in point. It designs and engineers everything and stringently checks that its Chinese ODMs aren't quietly swapping in cheaper inferior parts or alter its software. I therefore assume Apple products are safe even though they're manufactured in China.

But the fact is that most Western manufacturers are too lazy to develop things themselves and merely slap their label on a Chinese designed and manufactured product. This means that the Chinese could slip in anything in the hard/software which creates a huge security liability.

by hn_submit

7/29/2026 at 2:47:34 PM

> Apple is a case in point. It designs and engineers everything and stringently checks that its Chinese ODMs aren't quietly swapping in cheaper inferior parts or alter its software. I therefore assume Apple products are safe even though they're manufactured in China.

Absolutely. I trust Apple a lot more than I trust almost any other company. Maybe Valve is up there as well.

> But the fact is that most Western manufacturers are too lazy to develop things themselves and merely slap their label on a Chinese designed and manufactured product. This means that the Chinese could slip in anything in the hard/software which creates a huge security liability.

Well, the problem here would be a Chinese entity being required to create a US entity, which often just ends up with the US entity inheriting everything, including the slips, from the Chinese entity.

by LoganDark

7/29/2026 at 11:39:45 AM

"foreign backdoors" and "security vulnerabilities". Both are an worn-out excuse, not some real concern.

Gaslighting as a policy.

by cingraa

7/29/2026 at 12:53:17 PM

I'm sure most people who've ever said it were not talking about actual cases, only decoy reasons to get people worried about it and justify actions about it. But both things do exist: foreign backdoors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA8WuXDXfcI) and security vulnerabilities (too many router, smart TV, streaming box etc. botnets to count). Not to mention the backdoors and security vulnerabilities that aren't foreign (e.g. Tesla vehicles).

But I think both such things talked about in this announcement are complete bullshit, yes

by LoganDark

7/29/2026 at 12:23:25 PM

[dead]

by fhub

7/29/2026 at 11:30:11 AM

I have to point out how deeply unserious it is that the following line...

> As the technology matures, advanced robotic devices have growing use cases in monitoring and securing critical infrastructure.

...cites:

'Secret Service uses robot dogs to guard Trump's Mar-a-Lago in FL' as reported in the Palm Beach Daily News

by randusername

7/29/2026 at 11:18:14 AM

Say goodbye to robots just like EVs

Thanks Trump

by AIorNot

7/29/2026 at 11:40:55 AM

How do you think a responsible administration, members of your party of choice, would differ on this matter? Or EVs?

by grosswait

7/29/2026 at 11:59:09 AM

Perhaps by thinking more than zero steps ahead.

An administration filled with people who read books that don't have pictures might, for example, consider the chilling effects this anti-free market, anto-competitive nonsense will have on our economy and the economies of our allies.

They might even consider two steps into the very near future and realize that the last nations to automate will become the poorest nations almost overnight, and be forced to watch as the price of good declines for the entire world except their shifty, isolated, tariffed, backwater.

Heck, such and administration might even have a few scientists and economists left employed who could advise them, having not just forced many of the best and brightest to flee to more enlightened parts of the world just to stay employed or live in a places that don't treat inconvenient truths as blasphemy.

by mapontosevenths

7/29/2026 at 11:48:36 AM

Maybe by not being the most blatantly corrupt assholes of all time?

by bix6

7/29/2026 at 11:21:34 AM

it is a real threat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xha2TJ_1C6Q

by tw1984

7/29/2026 at 11:49:38 AM

Very cool, but video looks accelerated and something about the robot shading/lighting gives it a rendered feel.

by nexus6

7/29/2026 at 12:21:36 PM

The video looks fake or at least enhanced. A net or a bucket of oily sand would disable that annoyance.

by ghlancet

7/29/2026 at 11:51:39 AM

That video clearly states that they have always placed great emphasis on product safety and information security, and that they kindly request that all users refrain from making dangerous modifications or using the robot in a hazardous manner.

by gowld