For the first time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has included a Russian firm, Kaspersky, on its list of potential security threats.

For the first time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States has listed Kaspersky Labs as a corporation that poses a “unacceptable danger to US national security.”
Chinese firms dominate the list, including Huawei and ZTE, as well as Kaspersky and China Mobile and China Telecom International, which Kaspersky was joined by.
China Mobile and China Telecom “looked to reach the threshold required to add these businesses to our list,” stated FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in a news statement announcing the trio of additions.
With their inclusion, together with Kaspersky Labs, we can better protect our networks from attacks presented by Chinese and Russian state-backed organisations who are intent on harming our interests.”
In fact, this implies that government subsidies cannot be used by US enterprises to acquire equipment or services, which is significantly different from an outright prohibition or the trade embargo that damaged Huawei’s ability to utilise Android back in 2019.
It’s understandable that Kaspersky is outraged by this, and has issued a statement stating that the decision is a reaction to the geopolitical context rather than based on any worries about the quality or otherwise of its products.
According to the announcement, “This decision is not based on any technical evaluation of Kaspersky products—which the firm continually pushes for—but rather is being made on political reasons.” It also targeted the government agencies’ continued prohibition on Kaspersky products, which was put into law in 2017 for identical reasons.
That being said, this isn’t the first time the government has urged people to avoid using the company’s goods. The German Federal Office for Information Security issued a public advice earlier this month recommending that users switch to a different anti-virus software.
A successful cyberattack might have far-reaching effects, as the BSI highlighted in its reasoning in light of Russia’s warlike acts and threats against the EU, NATO, and the Federal Republic of Germany (via Google Translate.)