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.
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.
Among other reasons: the recent ban was on FCC approval for new products. Existing products that had already secured FCC approval are unaffected by the new policy and can continue being sold.
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 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.
The collapse as you call it is occurring precisely because we started hating ourselves and pitted one another against one another, whether that’s by class, race, or gender. And both major political parties are guilty of that to varying degrees. We are an unserious society, obsessed with the new Buc-eez gas station, TikTok, and abstract art. We forgot that Communism and Fascism are social death spirals, and that good governance requires not just an education but a desire to learn and engage. If this is collapse (it’s not) it’s largely because of factors such as that. Sometimes I don’t blame the Islamic fundamentalists and their chants of Death to America. I’d fight to the death too to stop some dumb ass gas station beaver and a bunch of MAGA folks and furries from setting up shop in my country too, if only it hasn’t already happened here.
I know there is a personal responsibility / call to action in there but I think it elides both how politics work and how people work. Politics is run by cynical operatives skilled in mass manipulation and people generally believe what they’re told to believe. Encouraging people to tilt at windmills is one of the ways to undermine effective opposition. Pitting them against each other is another way. I think actual effective opposition is localism / a general devolution of power.
It’s all moot anyway because AI is already smart enough to upend the economy / social order. A productivity boom without a consumption boom will kill margins across the board.
> dumb ass gas station beaver and a bunch of MAGA folks and furries
How on earth are those three things supposed to be equivalent? One is a gas station chain with an animal as part of its logo, which is uh, a normal thing? Are we against gas stations in general or animals used for branding or what?
Another is a group of people who like to dress up and/or pretend to be animals with their friends, the worst thing you can say about that is it's unusual.
The third thing is a bunch of death cultists who are scared of everything and willing to worship a dictator.
This is some hardcore false equivalence.
> because we started hating ourselves and pitted one another against one another, whether that’s by class, race, or gender
started? Were you raised in some kind of cave that prevented access to recorded human history? We've been hating each other for all sorts of reasons for quite longer than we have written records.
And it's funny, this kind of argument is usually made by people who are mad that injustices are being pointed out.
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.
No, because you should assume all code will be analyzed and attacked by adversarial AIs. That’s the real world impact of Project Glasswing and the like. If attackers are using it so should the blue team. AI analysis should be a part of your security review but not the whole thing.
Updated parent comment. Ideally, looking beyond this work, and more generally, a funded AI would be used to do analysis and then to dispatch tasks to qualified humans. A network of available qualified humans would have to exist that the AI can access. Humans could then of course provide feedback to AI for the loop to continue with new tasks to humans. Think Uber but more generally for AI to tap into real-world work and expertise.
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.
I passed on an invitation to tender a number of years ago because there was no way to meet the minority / women quota that was tied to it. The big players use pass through front companies which isn’t feasible for me as I’m a solo operator.
The Netgear thing is more egregious but the quotas are more pervasive. I would like to be rid of both.
The funding was tied to women and minorities only, so no veteran option. Also I would have had to get certified for that specific location which involves a third party that comes in and interviews the women / minorities to make sure they had actual positions of power and were not just figureheads. They had a scale down option so they could opt for a very small purchase that would actually be smaller than the audit cost let alone the cost of passing such an audit.
If by "doing things" you mean "accumulating mysterious anonymous crypto payments" and "getting a large draw from one of your shell companies", then yes.
no obvious reason
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.
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.
But fickle bans will never get us there.
Either they agreed to put the back door in their routers or someone got paid off.
Mysterious new buyer for one of Trump's crypto coins.
Why is TP Link still being sold.
Among other reasons: the recent ban was on FCC approval for new products. Existing products that had already secured FCC approval are unaffected by the new policy and can continue being sold.
In other words: it’s security theater and dubious economic protectionism, not a genuine attempt to counter a cyber threat.
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.
The router ban affects routers made in foreign countries, Netgear's headquarters should be irrelevant. The author's previous article spells this out better https://www.theverge.com/tech/899906/fcc-router-ban-march-20...
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.
The collapse as you call it is occurring precisely because we started hating ourselves and pitted one another against one another, whether that’s by class, race, or gender. And both major political parties are guilty of that to varying degrees. We are an unserious society, obsessed with the new Buc-eez gas station, TikTok, and abstract art. We forgot that Communism and Fascism are social death spirals, and that good governance requires not just an education but a desire to learn and engage. If this is collapse (it’s not) it’s largely because of factors such as that. Sometimes I don’t blame the Islamic fundamentalists and their chants of Death to America. I’d fight to the death too to stop some dumb ass gas station beaver and a bunch of MAGA folks and furries from setting up shop in my country too, if only it hasn’t already happened here.
I know there is a personal responsibility / call to action in there but I think it elides both how politics work and how people work. Politics is run by cynical operatives skilled in mass manipulation and people generally believe what they’re told to believe. Encouraging people to tilt at windmills is one of the ways to undermine effective opposition. Pitting them against each other is another way. I think actual effective opposition is localism / a general devolution of power.
It’s all moot anyway because AI is already smart enough to upend the economy / social order. A productivity boom without a consumption boom will kill margins across the board.
> dumb ass gas station beaver and a bunch of MAGA folks and furries
How on earth are those three things supposed to be equivalent? One is a gas station chain with an animal as part of its logo, which is uh, a normal thing? Are we against gas stations in general or animals used for branding or what?
Another is a group of people who like to dress up and/or pretend to be animals with their friends, the worst thing you can say about that is it's unusual.
The third thing is a bunch of death cultists who are scared of everything and willing to worship a dictator.
This is some hardcore false equivalence.
> because we started hating ourselves and pitted one another against one another, whether that’s by class, race, or gender
started? Were you raised in some kind of cave that prevented access to recorded human history? We've been hating each other for all sorts of reasons for quite longer than we have written records.
And it's funny, this kind of argument is usually made by people who are mad that injustices are being pointed out.
What was the home country of the acquiring company? UAE? Argentina?
MEGA is now headquartered in Hungary...who until very recently was run by someone very much aligned with the far right movement.
MEGA was founded by Kim Dotcom, who currently lives in New Zealand
Follow the money.
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.
Why AI? An unproven proprietary tech is your go-to over skilled security researchers?
No, because you should assume all code will be analyzed and attacked by adversarial AIs. That’s the real world impact of Project Glasswing and the like. If attackers are using it so should the blue team. AI analysis should be a part of your security review but not the whole thing.
Updated parent comment. Ideally, looking beyond this work, and more generally, a funded AI would be used to do analysis and then to dispatch tasks to qualified humans. A network of available qualified humans would have to exist that the AI can access. Humans could then of course provide feedback to AI for the loop to continue with new tasks to humans. Think Uber but more generally for AI to tap into real-world work and expertise.
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.
They paid the shakedown fee.
that’s the outcome of soft fascism: a lot of pay to play.
I passed on an invitation to tender a number of years ago because there was no way to meet the minority / women quota that was tied to it. The big players use pass through front companies which isn’t feasible for me as I’m a solo operator.
The Netgear thing is more egregious but the quotas are more pervasive. I would like to be rid of both.
It’s very possible to do so. Partner with someone in the space and they take a vig.
An even better option is to partner with a veteran owned entity, which often allows you to bypass the bidding process.
The funding was tied to women and minorities only, so no veteran option. Also I would have had to get certified for that specific location which involves a third party that comes in and interviews the women / minorities to make sure they had actual positions of power and were not just figureheads. They had a scale down option so they could opt for a very small purchase that would actually be smaller than the audit cost let alone the cost of passing such an audit.
‘The United States’ foreign router ban didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and today may not change that.`
???
No obvious reason? What if the Executive Branch is a dog chasing cars?
It’s just doing things.
If by "doing things" you mean "accumulating mysterious anonymous crypto payments" and "getting a large draw from one of your shell companies", then yes.