Regulator Pulls Dashcam and Transmitter From Shelves Over Chip Inside

The Federal Communications Commission has barred a dashboard camera and a wireless video transmitter from sale in the United States. It is the first time the agency has used a rule adopted recently that lets it act on what a chip does rather than what a product is called.

Both gadgets were blocked because each contains a HiSilicon Smart Vision system on a chip. HiSilicon belongs to Huawei, and Huawei and its subsidiaries sit on the FCC's Covered List of entities the agency considers a risk to U.S. national security. The rule is designed to close a gap that let rebranded products carrying parts from Chinese manufacturers named on U.S. export restriction lists keep reaching buyers. Because it targets the silicon, a ban does not have to track each product or label.

The processor at issue is the Hi3516CV610 UHD Smart Vision, built for surveillance and camera work such as vehicle dashcams and wireless CCTV systems. It combines WiFi, Ethernet, video encoding hardware, an Arm Cortex-A7 processor and a neural processing unit for AI functions. The FCC's concern centers on that neural processing unit, which it describes as a device containing logic-bearing smart components made by entities on the Covered List.

The chip's data sheet states its Intelligent Video Engine runs on the neural processing unit and uses a built-in dedicated multimodal large model along with transformer feature acceleration. This lets the AI track relationships between objects from one video frame to the next, holding attention on subjects the data sheet lists as pets, faces, human figures and parcels. In practice, that could let a camera tell a pet escaping from an unknown person taking a parcel a courier left. The FCC reads the same logic-bearing AI as capable of surveying U.S. citizens and logging faces for foreign surveillance.

Huawei has been tied to an AI chip controversy before. The company used shell companies to get TSMC to manufacture AI chips for it after a U.S. request that TSMC stop supplying a list of Chinese customers. Huawei's history of controversies has led to other product bans in the United States.

Commenters on the original report split on the decision. Some called it protectionism or asked whether American surveillance differs from foreign surveillance. Others questioned whether the FCC's authority covers only wireless devices; one pointed to the Communications Act of 1934, which directs the agency to protect both wired and wireless interstate and international communications. Another argued bans should have been based on silicon from the start, given how many revisions and regional variants one product can have.