Could it be related to Netgear being manufactured in Vietnam Thailand and Indonesia to avoid China tariffs and that somehow got them through an audit? I only ask if the overall unwritten goal is to avoid China.
> Could it be related to Netgear being manufactured in Vietnam Thailand and Indonesia to avoid China tariffs and that somehow got them through an audit? I only ask if the overall unwritten goal is to avoid China.
> Pursuing activities antagonistic to [China] has become further paralyzed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordering staff that they need his signoff for any China-related actions, people familiar with the matter said. As a result, even senior Commerce officials at times sit by his office waiting or outside the building, watching for his car. Officials at other agencies pursued a ban on a China-linked router maker by styling it as an order that doesn’t name the company or China.
> ...
> One such office had already determined that China-founded router company TP-Link and China-linked internet-connected trucks and buses pose national security risks. Officials thought vulnerabilities in their software could provide China access to spy on U.S. communications or access sensitive infrastructure.
> Interagency reviews had reached a similar conclusion about the risk of TP-Link and supported a ban. Staff had set in motion new rule-making to restrict U.S. sales of those products before they were put on hold and office leadership dismissed, according to officials familiar with the process.
> ...
> Supporters of a ban on TP-Link in March eked out a victory. The Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on new imports of all foreign-made routers, “regardless of the nationality of the producer,” a blanket prohibition that also accomplishes sidelining Chinese routers without naming the country or TP-Link. The new rule was designed in part to minimize disruptions to Trump’s relationship with Xi, people familiar with the matter said.
I would love to see the US rekindle the domestic manufacture of affordable consumer/prosumer network hardware. The US can already manufacture SoCs, PWBs, and chassis hardware, we just need a business case for putting it all together. Managed well, sustained protection from international competition could provide this business case, and buffer against global shipping disruptions, while the sheer volume of CPE equipment would eventually drive down costs.
Domestic manufacturing is not coming back because there are no guarantees whatsoever that this ban is going to last. Nobody is going to shell out hundreds of millions to setup manufacturing for such a low-margin product when it is much cheaper and risk-free to just sidestep the ban.
Mikrotik manufactures a lot of stuff in Latvia, yes. That's where they're based, and where most of their engineering happens.
Some of their stuff is also stated to be made in, at least, Lithuania, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China (in no particular order).
And I really don't have much of an idea how much of the devices are made in any of those places, but it's not hard to find an occasional clue.
For example: The Mikrotik wAP AC that is hanging on the wall in the room where I write this is was labelled as having been made in Latvia when I bought it. But the main brainbox IC inside of it, a Qualcomm QCA9556, is manufactured by TSMC. That's probably not something made in a Latvian plant.
What of the rest? The metal and plastic components of the housing? The connectors, the PCBs? The jelly-bean parts on those PCBs?
---
The recent ham-fisted FCC rules make it so any foreign-made component of a new router design excludes it from sale in the US, by default.
It may be harder than you think it is to get this done.
Even the simple stuff might be hard: Do we even make LEDs in the States? I don't mean anything high-power or fancy (we definitely don't make those here), but I also can't find any evidence suggesting that we can even manufacture a lowly status LED in the US at this point.
Or, something mechanical: PCB-mount 8P8C ethernet jacks. I don't find any of those manufactured in the States, either. (Can we even muster up the effort to make those? They're mostly injection-molded plastic, which we haven't forgotten how to do stuff with. But they also use beryllium copper, which is a special kind of a spooky to work with in terms of health hazards.)
I'm not sure that Mikrotik putting together some stuff in Latvia, of all places, represents a very good example: If they were doing in Nebraska what they presently do in Latvia then their products would still be excluded by default.
I feel like pretending a department under this administration's thumb is actually going to act honestly is a bit absurd.
They made a donation ... somewhere. Now they're all good. None of Trump's bluster is honest, they're just graft gates.
It wasn't any different during the first administration. I worked at a company slated to be acquired by a foreign company. But the approval just never came from the feds. Then one day the acquiring foreign company CEO visited the White House and that day Trump approved it. Trump even made a little speech about jobs. Then we were all told we were going to be laid off... just like that almost all the American jobs gone. Shortly after one of Trump's companies announced a big land deal in the home country of the acquiring company. MEGA ...
The looting stage of collapse, people tend to think someone will come and save things but so long as there is more money in decline the leaders will do that instead.
It seems very obvious that they are probably going to give router companies that have an okay or above reputation time to comply with the law and cheap Chinese imports where they obviously have a strong relationship with the Chinese government or any sort of questionable reputation immediate ban.
My bigger fear is whether Netgear has one or more backdoors exploitable for use by the US government. It's firmware will have to be reverse engineered and then reviewed by AI, proof-based analysis, and security researchers.
In the long term, an absence of competition bodes poorly.
I wonder if concessions to allow US government spying were made in exchange for this approval. It seems that at least a couple of these routers allow for replacement firmware such as OpenWRT, though, so it might be OK.
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the router ban intended to affect foreign companies, not one based in San Jose, California? If so, that would explain why they get an exception.
I was under the impression the ping back to china security issues are what prompted this, until they were evaluated. I don't think Netgear would have a problem passing the audit.
Obviously the Trump family is being made richer or more powerful somehow. It’s obvious. Saying there is no obvious reason is as insane as believing the delay in banning TikTok wasn’t corrupt.
80 comments
Could it be related to Netgear being manufactured in Vietnam Thailand and Indonesia to avoid China tariffs and that somehow got them through an audit? I only ask if the overall unwritten goal is to avoid China.
> Could it be related to Netgear being manufactured in Vietnam Thailand and Indonesia to avoid China tariffs and that somehow got them through an audit? I only ask if the overall unwritten goal is to avoid China.
That goal isn't even that secret:
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/trump-china-xi-beijing-e2472...:
> Pursuing activities antagonistic to [China] has become further paralyzed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordering staff that they need his signoff for any China-related actions, people familiar with the matter said. As a result, even senior Commerce officials at times sit by his office waiting or outside the building, watching for his car. Officials at other agencies pursued a ban on a China-linked router maker by styling it as an order that doesn’t name the company or China.
> ...
> One such office had already determined that China-founded router company TP-Link and China-linked internet-connected trucks and buses pose national security risks. Officials thought vulnerabilities in their software could provide China access to spy on U.S. communications or access sensitive infrastructure.
> Interagency reviews had reached a similar conclusion about the risk of TP-Link and supported a ban. Staff had set in motion new rule-making to restrict U.S. sales of those products before they were put on hold and office leadership dismissed, according to officials familiar with the process.
> ...
> Supporters of a ban on TP-Link in March eked out a victory. The Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on new imports of all foreign-made routers, “regardless of the nationality of the producer,” a blanket prohibition that also accomplishes sidelining Chinese routers without naming the country or TP-Link. The new rule was designed in part to minimize disruptions to Trump’s relationship with Xi, people familiar with the matter said.
But fickle bans will never get us there.
Some of their stuff is also stated to be made in, at least, Lithuania, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China (in no particular order).
And I really don't have much of an idea how much of the devices are made in any of those places, but it's not hard to find an occasional clue.
For example: The Mikrotik wAP AC that is hanging on the wall in the room where I write this is was labelled as having been made in Latvia when I bought it. But the main brainbox IC inside of it, a Qualcomm QCA9556, is manufactured by TSMC. That's probably not something made in a Latvian plant.
What of the rest? The metal and plastic components of the housing? The connectors, the PCBs? The jelly-bean parts on those PCBs?
---
The recent ham-fisted FCC rules make it so any foreign-made component of a new router design excludes it from sale in the US, by default.
It may be harder than you think it is to get this done.
Even the simple stuff might be hard: Do we even make LEDs in the States? I don't mean anything high-power or fancy (we definitely don't make those here), but I also can't find any evidence suggesting that we can even manufacture a lowly status LED in the US at this point.
Or, something mechanical: PCB-mount 8P8C ethernet jacks. I don't find any of those manufactured in the States, either. (Can we even muster up the effort to make those? They're mostly injection-molded plastic, which we haven't forgotten how to do stuff with. But they also use beryllium copper, which is a special kind of a spooky to work with in terms of health hazards.)
I'm not sure that Mikrotik putting together some stuff in Latvia, of all places, represents a very good example: If they were doing in Nebraska what they presently do in Latvia then their products would still be excluded by default.
They made a donation ... somewhere. Now they're all good. None of Trump's bluster is honest, they're just graft gates.
It wasn't any different during the first administration. I worked at a company slated to be acquired by a foreign company. But the approval just never came from the feds. Then one day the acquiring foreign company CEO visited the White House and that day Trump approved it. Trump even made a little speech about jobs. Then we were all told we were going to be laid off... just like that almost all the American jobs gone. Shortly after one of Trump's companies announced a big land deal in the home country of the acquiring company. MEGA ...
> They made a donation ... somewhere.
Likely some kind of gold statue was involved. And just like that, laws change in your favor.
In the long term, an absence of competition bodes poorly.
But I'm incredibly suspicious.
https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1slngfa/the_fcc_j...
https://old.reddit.com/r/pwnhub/comments/1s1zz4l/fcc_bans_fo...
https://old.reddit.com/r/pwnhub/comments/1s2thgj/the_fcc_rou...
The posts are AI slop but not incorrect. I didn't have to look anything up to know there was some kind of bribery or insider corruption going on here.
???
No obvious reason? What if the Executive Branch is a dog chasing cars?
It’s just doing things.