Texas Sues Wi-Fi Router Maker Over Alleged China Links

Texas is suing TP-Link Systems, a California-based maker of wi-fi routers, accusing it of concealing its ties to China and potentially exposing U.S. users’ home networks to hackers.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the lawsuit on Feb. 17, alleging deceptive marketing practices. Paxton first began investigating TP-Link in October 2025, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has since prohibited state employees from using TP-Link products.

TP-Link, founded in China in 1996, stated on its website that it underwent a restructuring in 2024 that split the company into TP-Link Systems and TP-Link Technologies, which serves the mainland Chinese market, and that the two entities are no longer affiliated. Devices sold to U.S. consumers also carry “Made in Vietnam” labels.

However, Paxton alleged that those “Made in Vietnam” stickers are meant to obscure a supply chain “deeply entrenched in China,” where nearly all of TP-Link’s components are sourced before being shipped to Vietnam for final assembly.

Those supply-chain ties, the lawsuit claims, leave the company vulnerable to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) counterespionage and national security laws, which require Chinese companies and citizens to assist state intelligence efforts, including providing foreign user data upon request. The complaint also alleges that firmware vulnerabilities in TP-Link hardware have already “exposed millions of consumers to severe cybersecurity risks.”

“Instead of the secure doorway consumers expect, TP-Link devices are an open window for Chinese-sponsored threat actors and Chinese intelligence agencies,” Paxton alleged in the complaint filed in Collin County, Texas, where he says TP-Link devices are sold at Best Buy and Walmart stores.

The suit seeks up to $10,000 for each violation of Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act or up to $250,000 per violation if the affected consumer is 65 or older.

The legal action comes about a year after TP-Link was singled out at a hearing of the House Select Committee on the CCP, during which Rob Joyce, a retired National Security Agency cybersecurity expert, linked its devices to the massive “Salt Typhoon” hacking campaign in which Chinese state-backed hackers tried to infiltrate U.S. telecom companies, including Verizon and AT&T.

Accusing TP-Link of relying on “Chinese-controlled technologies,” Joyce urged members of Congress to “[eliminate] TP-Link’s footprint” from the United States. TP-Link reports holding more than 36 percent unit share of the U.S. consumer router market during 2024, meaning that if its products were banned, the move could rival the 2019 Huawei ban as one of the largest removals of Chinese telecom equipment from the U.S. market.

At the time, TP-Link issued a lengthy rebuke to Joyce’s testimony, saying it is headquartered in Irvine, California; serves as the parent company for the global TP-Link business; and that no government—including Beijing—has access to or control over the design and production of its routers.

Following Paxton’s lawsuit, the company similarly stated that it is an “independent American company” that will “vigorously defend” its reputation, reiterating that the Chinese regime does not exercise “any form of ownership or control over TP-Link, its products, or its user data.”

“The claims made by the Texas Attorney General’s office are without merit and will be proven false,” a spokesperson for the company said in response to a request for comment. “To ensure the highest level of security, our core operations and infrastructure are located entirely within the United States, and all U.S. users’ networking data is stored securely on Amazon Web Services servers. We will continue to vigorously defend our reputation as a trusted provider of secure connectivity for American families.”

The lawsuit is one of what Paxton has described as a “coordinated series of actions against CCP-aligned companies.” In December 2025, his office filed separate privacy lawsuits against Hisense and TCL—both subsidiaries of China-based firms, accusing them of selling television viewers’ data without their consent.