Covered List

The FCC has put foreign-produced power inverters and advanced robots on its Covered List, and the test it wrote is where a device was made rather than who made it

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 2, 2026

Photo: adrian vieriu / Pexels

What it changes

If you sell inverters into the United States, the question to answer this week is where the unit is built, not who builds it. The determination covers power inverters produced in a foreign country regardless of the nationality of the producer, so an American brand assembling abroad sits inside the wording and a foreign brand assembling in Ohio sits outside it. Nothing already installed stops working. No authorisation already granted is withdrawn by this notice, which contains no step of that kind. What changes is the next model: equipment on the Covered List is prohibited from receiving an equipment authorisation, and every applicant must now certify that its equipment is not covered, so a product still in certification is the one with a problem. Know which door you are at, because the two categories do not share one. For inverters, either the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security may grant a Conditional Approval. For advanced robotic devices, only the Department of War may. If you run a warehouse or a plant with foreign-built machines on order, the same question reaches your fleet, and the definition that decides whether your machine counts as an advanced robotic device is in an appendix the Commission released as a scan. The inverter determination talks about inverter-based resources proliferating on the American grid, which is the vocabulary of solar and storage, but the scope of the term is set by a definition this desk could not read.

No country is named.

The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau added two categories of equipment to its Covered List on 28 July, and neither entry mentions China or any other state. The first reads "Foreign-produced power inverters, except power inverters which have been granted a Conditional Approval by DoW or DHS." The second reads "Foreign-produced advanced robotic devices, except advanced robotic devices which have been granted a Conditional Approval by DoW."

For its first five years the Covered List was a list of companies. Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua went on in March 2021, Kaspersky and a set of Chinese carriers followed, and a carrier was added as recently as 7 July. Since last winter it has been turning into a list of things instead. Foreign-produced uncrewed aircraft went on in December 2025, foreign-produced routers in March, and now inverters and robots.

The bureau says what that shift means in one sentence. These updates "will not implicate various rules and programs applicable to entities identified on the Covered List, because this newly-covered equipment is identified by place of production, not by entity." The determination on inverters is blunter still, covering units produced in a foreign country "regardless of the nationality of the producer."

Two National Security Determinations reached the Commission on 27 July from an Executive Branch interagency body convened by the White House. The inverter determination states that remote connectivity "introduces additional vulnerabilities which compound as inverter-based resources proliferate on the U.S. grid," and that those vulnerabilities could allow foreign firms to switch the inverters off. The robotics determination states that the data such devices collect could be used "to remotely commandeer the robots."

What the listing does is narrow and it is immediate. Under section 2.903(a) of the Commission's rules, equipment on the Covered List is prohibited from receiving an equipment authorization, and under section 2.911 every applicant must certify that its equipment is not covered. Nothing already authorised is revoked here. This notice carries no step of that kind, unlike the separate proceeding the same bureau filed three days later, which proposes to halt the continued importation and marketing of already-authorised military-grade drones.

The way out is not identical for the two categories. An inverter can be cleared by the Department of War or by the Department of Homeland Security. A robot can be cleared only by the Department of War.

One thing this desk cannot tell a reader is what the words mean. The bureau accepts the definitions of "foreign-produced", "power inverters" and "advanced robotic devices" set out in the two determinations, and restates none of them. Both determinations are attached as appendices, and in the released document those appendices are scans: pages 7 through 15 of the PDF carry one image each and no machine-readable text beyond a running header, while the six pages before them carry between 2,105 and 3,574 characters apiece. The scope of the listing therefore sits in nine pictures of paper.

This item is five days old. It runs now because this publication had nothing on it and the listing is in force.

The document: Federal Communications Commission, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau Announces Addition of Foreign-Produced Power Inverters and Advanced Robotic Devices to FCC Covered List, Public Notice, DA 26-786, released 28 July 2026, WC Docket No. 18-89, ET Docket No. 21-232, EA Docket No. 21-233. Both the plain text release and the 15 page PDF were downloaded and read in full here; no fetch-tool summary was relied on, and every quotation, rule citation and date below was matched against the document text. The text file returned HTTP 200 at 17,350 bytes and the PDF HTTP 200 at 1,936,619 bytes. Identifiers matched: DA 26-786; the three docket numbers above; statutory basis the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, Pub. L. No. 116-124, 133 Stat. 158 (2020), codified as amended at 47 U.S.C. 1601-1609; implementing rules 47 CFR 1.50002 and 1.50003; contact Chris Smeenk, Attorney Advisor, Operations and Emergency Management Division, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, 202-418-1630. As verified: the White House convened an Executive Branch interagency body which on 27 July 2026 sent the Commission two National Security Determinations, one on power inverters and one on advanced robotic devices, attached as Appendices B and C. The determination on inverters finds that power inverters produced in a foreign country pose the unacceptable risks of facilitating a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt US economic security and of creating a cybersecurity risk to critical infrastructure, and covers them 'regardless of the nationality of the producer'. The determination on advanced robotic devices makes findings in the same two categories. The two new Covered List entries read, verbatim: 'Foreign-produced power inverters, except power inverters which have been granted a Conditional Approval by DoW or DHS'; and 'Foreign-produced advanced robotic devices, except advanced robotic devices which have been granted a Conditional Approval by DoW.' Both carry the date of inclusion 28 July 2026 in the updated Covered List at Appendix A. The Bureau states that it accepts the determinations' definitions of 'foreign-produced', 'power inverters' and 'advanced robotic devices' as provided in the appendices, and does not restate them. Conditional Approvals: the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security may evaluate submissions for power inverters, and the Department of War alone may evaluate submissions for advanced robotic devices. On effect, as verified: under 47 CFR 2.903(a), once added to the Covered List covered equipment is prohibited from receiving equipment authorizations, and under 47 CFR 2.911(d)(5)(i) every applicant for an equipment authorization must certify that the equipment is not prohibited by virtue of being covered equipment. The Bureau states that these updates 'will not implicate various rules and programs applicable to entities identified on the Covered List, because this newly-covered equipment is identified by place of production, not by entity.' The Appendix A table was read row by row: the entries dated 12 March 2021 are Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua; 25 March 2022 AO Kaspersky Lab, China Mobile International USA, China Telecom (Americas); 20 September 2022 Pacific Networks and ComNet (USA), China Unicom (Americas); 23 July 2024 Kaspersky Lab, Inc.; 22 December 2025 uncrewed aircraft systems and UAS critical components produced in a foreign country, together with the equipment listed in section 1709(a)(1) of the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act, Pub. L. 118-159; 23 March 2026 routers produced in a foreign country; 7 July 2026 Digitalsystem Technology Inc.; and 28 July 2026 the two new entries. Structural observation made directly against the file rather than inferred: pages 7 through 15 of the released PDF, which carry Appendices B and C, each contain exactly one embedded image and between 49 and 61 characters of extractable text, that text being the running header and the page number. Pages 1 through 6 carry between 2,105 and 3,574 characters each. The two determinations are therefore scanned images in the released document and their definitions are not machine readable. No country is named anywhere in the notice or in either quoted determination passage..

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