Records show at least three US federal agencies bought Lorex video surveillance equipment from Chinese firm Dahua Technology despite a government ban
Lorex is owned by Dahua, a technology maker linked to human rights abuses. — At least three U.S. federal agencies, including the military … Tweets: @brendancarrfcc , @adam_k_levin , and @zackwhittaker Tweets: Brendan Carr / @brendancarrfcc : This report that U.S. government agencies—including the military—are purchasing prohibited Chinese surveillance gear in violation of federal law is deeply disturbing. Congress put this ban in place due to concerns that Beijing would use this gear to conduct espionage. https://twitter.com/... Adam Levin / @adam_k_levin : Government agencies are finding the ban on Chinese surveillance tech to be significantly easier said than done: https://techcrunch.com/... Zack Whittaker / @zackwhittaker : New: At least three U.S. government agencies, including the military, have purchased China-made video surveillance tech linked to human rights abuses, despite a ban on selling the tech to the federal government. https://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The federal purchase records land in a supply chain already retreating from Dahua: weeks earlier, Home Depot, Lowe's and Best Buy stopped selling Lorex cameras over the same human-rights concerns, while Walmart and Costco kept them stocked. The brand structure is the loophole — Lorex is owned by Dahua, so a federal ban on Dahua equipment doesn't stop agencies from buying the same hardware under a retail label.
The violation also extends a documented pattern downward through every level of government: more than 100 US municipalities had already bought Hikvision and Dahua surveillance systems, and state and local governments kept purchasing banned Chinese telecom equipment after a federal-level prohibition. An AP investigation later found the US government itself had allowed and even helped American companies sell surveillance tech to China across five administrations, making enforcement the recurring failure point rather than the ban itself.
First-order effects
- At least three federal agencies, including the military, are shown to have violated Congress's ban on Dahua equipment by procuring Lorex-branded gear, drawing immediate calls from FCC commissioner Brendan Carr for accountability over espionage risk.
- Dahua retains US government revenue through its consumer subsidiary despite being blacklisted, undercutting the ban's intended effect of cutting off federal exposure to its hardware.
Second-order effects
- Federal buyers face pressure to audit existing Lorex installations and trace ownership chains before purchase, since brand names no longer signal compliance — the same problem retailers solved by pulling the product entirely.
- Congress and oversight bodies get fresh evidence that procurement rules fail without enforcement mechanisms, strengthening the case for mandatory vendor-ownership disclosure requirements like those only five states have adopted for telecom equipment.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — municipal Dahua buys, continued state telecom purchases, now federal Lorex buys — US bans on Chinese surveillance hardware function as paper walls, pushing the real battleground from export restrictions to procurement verification and supply-chain transparency legislation.
- The ownership-laundering dynamic (blacklisted parent, clean retail brand) points toward regulation keyed to corporate lineage rather than product labels, forcing companies like Dahua to choose between the US consumer channel and opacity about who owns their brands.
The trend: US restrictions on Chinese surveillance technology keep expanding while enforcement lags at every level of government, leaving blacklisted vendors reachable through subsidiaries, resellers, and unenforced procurement rules.