The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is banning imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots, quadruped robots and power inverters, citing national security risks in a move that targets China. The order lands on ordinary consumers and companies far from Washington’s conference rooms, where officials keep redrawing the lines of who gets access to what technology and who gets shut out.
Who Gets Cut Off
FCC chairperson Brendan Carr said Tuesday that the move was meant to “secure America’s critical supply chains.” He said the bans apply to “new versions” of such imports. That’s the language of control dressed up as protection. The apparatus says “security,” and the market gets rearranged from the top down.
The ban also includes new imports of quadruped robots, often referred to as four-legged robot dogs. The FCC’s bans follow a slew of U.S. restrictions on imports of Chinese products, including drones, and on exports of U.S. advanced technology to China. The U.S. is also weighing controls on use of Chinese open-source artificial intelligence models at a time when Chinese AI is rapidly gaining ground.
The debate comes as the U.S. government is weighing controls on Chinese open-source artificial intelligence models as Washington intensifies restrictions on Chinese technology. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the United States should not block Chinese AI in an effort to gain the upper hand. He told the Financial Times that a U.S. ban on Chinese AI models would not be “an effective solution” and suggested that U.S. companies should instead “systematically” identify bottlenecks and roadblocks in order to better compete with Chinese AI firms.
What Washington Calls Competition
His comments came as an intense debate rages in Washington over how the U.S. should regulate the fast-developing technology and respond to increasingly sophisticated Chinese competition. Some senior Trump administration officials have claimed there is evidence that China’s Moonshot AI covertly used U.S. rivals to train its latest model Kimi K3. Moonshot has denied the allegations. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned last week that “sanctions” could be considered if Chinese labs “cross the line into IP theft.”
That’s the state’s favorite move: turn a technological race into a security panic, then threaten punishment when the other side refuses to play by the script. The people building, shipping, and buying the machines don’t get a vote in any of it.
China’s Foreign Ministry hit back at the U.S. move, accusing Washington of overstretching the concept of national security to suppress Chinese companies. China will take “all measures necessary” to defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses, it said. “Protectionism does not make the U.S. more competitive, and it will only hurt the interests of U.S. companies and consumers,” Mao Ning, a ministry spokesperson, told reporters at a regular press conference Wednesday in Beijing.
Who Pays for the Power Struggle
The measures are likely to test relations with Beijing ahead of a planned U.S. visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in September. The diplomatic theater keeps rolling while the machinery of restriction keeps grinding.
China dominates the global market for humanoid robots with an estimated market share of roughly 85%. China has been rapidly expanding the use of robots, with policies supporting its technology sector. Morgan Stanley analysts forecast its market for humanoids could reach $15 billion by 2030. Of the around 15,000 humanoid robots shipped globally in 2025, Unitree and AGIBOT, two of China’s largest advanced robotics companies, each shipped more than 5,000. Their U.S. counterparts, like Tesla and Figure AI, each shipped a few hundred or less, according to the technology research and advisory group Omdia.
Chinese manufacturers have been scaling production and reducing costs faster than most overseas competitors, said analyst Kangyuxiao Li at Morningstar. Restricting their access to the U.S. removes an important future market and protects U.S. developers from potential price competition, he said. However, he said, it will not materially slow China’s overall humanoid development, given the size of its domestic manufacturing base and opportunities in other export markets.
On the restrictions on power inverters, Cheng Wang, another Morningstar analyst, said the pressure on U.S. markets should be limited. The ban appears to not impact the continued use of existing devices nor the selling by Chinese companies of models that were previously approved by the United States.
The new bans could also potentially interfere with collaborations between U.S. and Chinese technology companies, said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia. Nvidia, for example, in June revealed a humanoid robot reference design which uses the humanoid chassis of China’s Unitree. The Pentagon recently included Unitree and several other major Chinese technology companies on its list of firms that it said have ties to or aid the Chinese military. Beijing has rejected that claim.
The whole mess shows how quickly the machinery of state power reaches into technology, trade, and labor, then calls the result “order.” The bans don’t just target products. They redraw the field so the powerful can keep competing while everyone else absorbs the fallout.