A bipartisan group of US House lawmakers has introduced the Guarding the US Against Adversarial Robotics Dominance (GUARD) Act, HR 9129, aimed at forcing national security reviews of humanoid and quadruped robots built in China and other foreign adversaries. If enacted, the bill would give the FCC authority to add non-compliant platforms to its Covered List and prohibit their importation.
Who is behind it
The bill is authored by House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Jennifer McClellan (D-VA). "Robots made by China are a threat to national security, critical infrastructure and American workers," Moolenaar said in a statement, arguing that Chinese hardware "contains backdoors that can be hijacked for espionage."
How the review works
HR 9129 gives national security agencies exactly one year to evaluate each humanoid and quadruped platform manufactured by an adversary, defined in the bill as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Products judged to present unacceptable national security risks would be added to the FCC's Covered List, blocking authorisation for use inside the United States. Critically, any platform that is not reviewed within one year is automatically added to the list — an aggressive default posture designed to prevent regulatory drift.
Industry impact
The largest immediate impact would fall on Chinese quadruped and humanoid vendors including Unitree Robotics, whose H1 Pro launched commercially in Europe just days before the bill drew wider attention, along with other players tracked in Morgan Stanley's Chinese humanoid shipment forecast. The bill has drawn endorsements from AUVSI and other robotics trade groups, though some US research labs have warned that a blanket ban could cut off access to the most affordable research platforms and set back academic robotics work already dependent on Chinese-made units used in university experiments.
Reporting based on coverage from the House Select Committee on the CCP, Ripon Advance, Washington Times and Interesting Engineering.