Telecommunications: Better Information Sharing Needed to Ensure Compliance with Foreign-Sourced Equipment Prohibitions

Filed 46m ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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The Bandit

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: From Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor", 185 · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A GAO audit found that federal agencies have largely complied with a 2019 law barring procurement of telecom and surveillance equipment from five named Chinese companies, with three fiscal years showing zero spending on them. As of March 2026, nearly 90 percent of contractors self-reported they don't use the banned equipment, though that figure relies on the companies' own word.

The Department of Defense and General Services Administration have built internal processes to screen for prohibited gear, but GAO found neither agency shares what it's learned, including information on the five companies' subsidiaries, with other agencies facing similar rules. GAO issued four recommendations urging information-sharing, and both agencies agreed.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Two agencies figured out how to dodge a national-security landmine and decided the map wasn't worth sharing. That's the kind of bureaucratic hoarding that looks fine on paper until the next agency steps on the same landmine from scratch. Agreeing with a recommendation costs nothing; actually picking up the phone might cost someone a meeting.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: The Bandit · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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