I don’t like to cover “current events” very much, but the American government just revealed a truly bewildering policy effectively banning import of new consumer router models. This is ridiculous for many reasons, but if this does indeed come to pass it may be beneficial to learn how to “homebrew” a router.
Fortunately, you can make a router out of basically anything resembling a computer.
↫ Noah Bailey
I genuinely can’t believe making your own router with Linux or BSD might become a much more widespread thing in the US. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing – it’ll teach some people something new – but it just feels so absurd.
This sudden happening almost certainly means they’ve found another Chinese kill switch in something China makes. China accidentally flipped on the kill switch for power inverters on American solar power farms a while ago, and the U.S. government has not revealed how much damage was done, just that it happened.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I think it’s more insidious than that. I feel like it’s a way for the US government to force American technology companies to build in kill switches of their own, with the keys shared with the government, so they can remotely disable any router they want to if the person behind it is exercising their free speech on the Internet in a way the government doesn’t like.
Now, I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but this one has roots in reality given the current administration’s efforts to prevent non-MAGAts from voting by mail, ICE goons attacking and even killing peaceful protesters, and so on.