Overview
- Governor Greg Abbott added Chinese electronics makers, artificial intelligence companies, and e-commerce platforms to the prohibited list for state employees and government devices.
- Newly named entities include Alibaba, Shein, PDD’s Temu, Hisense, Xiaomi, TCL, TP-Link, CATL, and AI firms such as SenseTime and Megvii.
- The state also listed prohibited apps and developers, including TikTok and ByteDance, WeChat and Tencent, Alipay, Lemon8, Kaspersky, and others.
- Banned hardware manufacturers include Huawei, ZTE, Dahua, Hikvision, Hytera, DJI, Uniview, and related subsidiaries or affiliates.
- Abbott said the action aims to prevent data harvesting by foreign adversaries, and Texas Cyber Command Chief TJ White said the additions followed a Jan. 20 directive and a subsequent threat assessment.