The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has updated its Covered List to bar new equipment authorizations for foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, in an action Commissioner Brendan Carr framed as a national-security move against Chinese-manufactured platforms that dominate the two categories.
What The Covered List Change Actually Does
The FCC's Covered List designation prevents new hardware models from receiving the equipment authorization required to be imported, marketed or sold as wireless devices in the United States. It does not retroactively pull already-authorized units, so existing fleets in the field remain legal to operate, but new SKUs from targeted manufacturers cannot enter the market. Analysts note that China shipped roughly 80% of the world's humanoid robots in 2025 and is on pace to exceed that share in 2026, giving the rule an outsized effect on planned U.S. launches from vendors such as Unitree Robotics and AgiBot.
UniPwn Bluetooth Exploit Sharpens The Case
Security researchers earlier this month disclosed UniPwn, a Bluetooth Low Energy exploit that yields root-level access to Unitree's Go2 and B2 quadrupeds and its G1 and H1 humanoids. The bug is wormable — an infected robot scans for nearby Unitree units over BLE and compromises them without any user interaction — which the FCC and outside security firms cited as evidence that consumer-grade robots can be turned into persistent surveillance and lateral-movement footholds inside enterprise and government networks.
Buyers Reroute Toward Domestic And Allied Vendors
Fleet operators that had been evaluating Chinese humanoids for warehouse, hospitality and inspection work are now being pushed toward U.S. and allied suppliers. That shift dovetails with recent Pentagon buys such as the Neros $500 million Army FPV drone deal and Boston Dynamics' expanding commercial Spot deployments, and it lands as domestic humanoid builders scale volume — including Xiaomi's CyberOne 2 factory demos at WRC 2026 and record production runs in the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.
Regulatory Overhang On A Booming Category
The Covered List action follows the FCC's parallel restrictions on Chinese-made power inverters and closes a workaround under which some importers had brought in robots as generic radio-equipped devices. The rules leave open a case-by-case review path, but Commissioner Carr told industry groups the agency will scrutinize any petitions from vendors whose products embed cellular or Wi-Fi radios and phone home to servers outside the United States.
Reporting based on coverage from the FCC, Forbes, ASIS Security Management, Fox News and Quartz.