Two members of the US Congress believe that the routers of the Chinese company TP-Link Technologies pose a threat to the country’s national security. They demanded that the Department of Commerce launch an investigation. This was reported by The Record.

In a letter sent to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Congressmen John Mulenaar and Raja Krishnamurthy said TP-Link routers have an “unusual degree of vulnerability.”

They call on the department to provide an opinion on the security risks by the end of August 2024, as well as to determine whether the use of the company’s products in the United States should be restricted.

Mulenaar and Krishnamurthy write that amid “increasingly draconian data protectionist and national security-focused legal regime,” the lawmakers wrote, “companies like TP-Link are required to provide data to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government and otherwise comply with the demands of its national security apparatus.”

As a result, the use of the company’s routers could pose a direct threat to US national security. Among other things, the congressmen were concerned about the cyber activity of the Chinese group Volt Typhoon. A characteristic feature of this group is the penetration of home routers in order to carry out further attacks.

In a press commentary, TP-Link noted that the US business is run by a separate, independent part of the company that has no ties to the Chinese one. These changes came into effect in May after the company carried out a “global restructuring”.