The US just made your Wi‑Fi worse to feel safer about China

The US is about to treat your $89 Wi‑Fi router like it’s a sleeper agent with a tiny antenna and a dream.

TechRadar’s read is basically this: the government is moving toward banning certain Chinese-made routers in the name of “national security,” and the collateral damage is your mom’s home network that already drops Zoom calls like it’s doing cardio.

They’ll say it’s about “securing critical infrastructure.”

Real-world effects are extremely sexy and fun: fewer models at Best Buy, higher prices, and everyone stuck buying whatever’s left on the shelf like it’s the last pack of toilet paper in March 2020.

Enterprise IT teams are especially cooked. Router bans don’t just hit consumers; they turn “network refresh” into “procurement nightmare,” where you’re swapping gear early, rewriting compliance docs, and explaining to your CFO why “the internet” now costs more than the office coffee budget.

Meanwhile, the companies not on the naughty list get a nice little patriotic profit bump. Less competition, more pricing power, same “we care about your security” press release written by a lawyer who’s never tried to reset a router with a paperclip.

If you’re a normal person, this shows up as: your old router gets harder to replace, the “cheap but decent” option disappears, and the new “approved” box costs more while still being held together by firmware last updated during the Obama administration.