The FCC has recently moved to block several new Chinese-made products from the U.S. market, including robot vacuums, humanoid robots and Wi-Fi routers. Now it has added two more categories: dashboard cameras and wireless video transmitters. Both involve technology from a company connected to a brand already facing U.S. restrictions.
This isn’t a blanket ban on dashcams or wireless video transmitters. Most products in those categories remain available. The FCC’s action targets two specific devices that use chips made by HiSilicon, a semiconductor company owned by Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Huawei and another Chinese technology company, ZTE, were identified as national security risks by a congressional committee in 2012. The companies did not persuade the panel that they would avoid spying on Americans for the Chinese government.
That warning eventually helped pave the way for restrictions imposed in 2019. Huawei was barred from selling its smartphones in the U.S., and its technology was excluded from American 5G networks. The company also lost access to Google’s Android platform and apps on its devices.
Huawei remains a major force internationally. After shifting from Android to its own operating system, HarmonyOS, it became the leading smartphone maker in China, ahead of Apple and Samsung.
HiSilicon, founded in 1991, designs semiconductors but does not manufacture them. Its work includes the Kirin processors used in Huawei phones, as well as chips for AI servers, smart home products and other devices. That means its technology can turn up in products beyond Huawei’s own lineup.
The FCC says it blocked two devices in the dashboard camera and wireless video transmitter categories because they contained HiSilicon chips. The products can no longer be sold or marketed to customers in the United States.
The agency also pointed to language in HiSilicon’s marketing materials describing some chips as intended for the surveillance market, with built-in algorithms to detect human faces.
The FCC’s announcement did not identify the manufacturers or models involved. It’s possible the chips ended up in products intended for the U.S. market by mistake, but the agency says it found the issue and acted.
Cybersecurity concerns have been mounting. Recent incidents have included a major global cyberattack and a breach of an enterprise cloud backup system used by thousands of companies. There are also ongoing questions about surveillance through Flock’s network of license-plate-reading cameras.
With those risks in mind, the FCC’s latest decision reflects a wider concern in Washington: that products using technology linked to China could create additional security and privacy problems for people in the United States.
