FCC humanoid robot ban blocks future foreign made models
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission added new foreign made humanoid robots, quadruped robots, and power inverters to its Covered List on 27 July, citing national security risks, according to Security Management. Equipment on the list cannot be authorized, marketed, or sold in the United States.
The FCC humanoid robot ban applies to future models, not machines that were already approved for import. The commission also carved out exemptions for industrial arms, stationary robots, and robots weighing less than 4.4 pounds.
Supply chain and cyber risk drive the rule
The FCC said its decision followed a White House interagency review that found foreign produced advanced robotic devices could create supply chain vulnerabilities for the U.S. economy and national security. The agency pointed to consolidation in critical robot components, including actuators, end effectors, batteries, and sensors, in a small number of countries.
The commission also framed the robots as cybersecurity and safety risks because they collect data and can operate in sensitive environments. In its reasoning, the FCC cited multiple robotics related cybersecurity issues, including an incident in which researchers identified potential pre installed backdoors on quadruped robots that could provide access to camera feeds and controls.
As described in the source article, the public case is broader than humanoids alone. The cited cybersecurity example concerns quadrupeds, while the policy covers humanoid robots as part of a wider category of advanced robotic devices used in critical infrastructure, security, manufacturing, and military contexts.
Conditional approvals and China exposure
The U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security have granted conditional approval to some advanced robotic devices and power inverters judged not to pose the cited risks. Manufacturers can submit applications for conditional approval before 1 January 2028.
China is not named in the FCC announcement, according to the article, but it is clearly central to the dispute. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce official said on 29 July that the FCC action, in substance, discriminates against and suppresses Chinese enterprises and products.
The robotics market exposure is substantial. The State of Robotics 2026 report from the Robotics Center of Silicon Valley, cited by Security Management, says China shipped approximately 80 percent of the world’s humanoid robots in 2025 and is expected to exceed that share in 2026 with advances from Unitree and AgiBot alone.
The article also cites China’s supply chain integration in the Yangtze River Delta, national policy coordination through a Humanoid Robot Action Plan to deploy 100,000 humanoids by 2027, and demand from major manufacturers including BYD, CATL, and Foxconn. For U.S. humanoid developers, the immediate practical effect may be narrower access to inexpensive Chinese platforms used for software development, demonstrations, and early market education.
Boston Dynamics policy executive Brendan Schulman backed the FCC decision in a LinkedIn post, calling communications and national security policy part of a national robotics strategy. That support is unsurprising from a U.S. robotics manufacturer, but the rule also leaves open a difficult implementation question: how regulators will distinguish unacceptable foreign supply chain risk from the global component reality of humanoid robotics.
Source: asisonline.org
