Drilling Down on Uncle Sam's Proposed TP-Link Ban

I don't have any particular opinion on TP-Link (never used their products), but the idea that a low-cost vendor targeting home and SMB users is somehow a state-level agent trying to compromise those users... needs evidence.

I mean, in the case of actors like Huawei, you can at least credibly make the argument that the continued access of their support staff to internal provider networks is a significant risk, but that vector is entirely absent here.

Sure, embedded firmware has been, is, and will continue to be a tire fire prone to embarrassing compromises, but containing those is mostly about notification and containment by government agencies (which the current US administration is doing their utmost best to kneecap) and/or large ISPs (which in the US have traditionally never cared).

Forcing "foreign" products off the market in favor of "domestic" replacements with the exact same, if not worse, flaws won't fix a thing, unless you put some pretty significant controls into place that nobody is willing to enforce or even outline.

> The company says it researches, designs, develops and manufactures everything except its chipsets in-house.

So, the plastic bits?

If only there were US manufacturers that could produce things at a decent price and didn't actively hate their customers.