Expand and keep current the FCC's Covered List

Research notes

Why partial and not done. Both halves of the ask have moved — the list was expanded at least four times inside the window, and FCC 25-71 addressed renaming and relabeling for equipment authorizations. What holds it below done is the Commission’s own August 2026 Third FNPRM, which proposes the further measures (bifurcating the list, white labeling, streamlined revocation) that would actually make the list account for changes in corporate names and forms. Those are proposals.

The one live challenge, and why it does not make this blocked. SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd., et al. v. Federal Communications Commission, et al., No. 26-1029 (9th Cir.), is a petition for review of the “agency decision dated 12/22/2025” — the addition of foreign-produced UAS and UAS critical components to the Covered List — filed 2026-02-20. The full docket was read at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72313063/sz-dji-technology-co-ltd-et-al-v-federal-communications-commission/ (last updated 2026-07-28, i.e. past the Corpus’s 2026-06-30 court cutoff). No stay was sought and none was entered. The FCC moved to dismiss for want of jurisdiction on 2026-03-06; on 2026-05-28 a panel of Friedland, R. Nelson and Bade denied that motion without prejudice and granted the petitioners’ request to hold the case in abeyance until November 2026, with the opening brief due 2026-11-02. The addition remains in force, which is consistent with the FCC still publishing Covered List enforcement notices on 2026-07-30 and 2026-08-24. Re-read 2026-09-03 (read-queue ticket 04) and unchanged: the abeyance order of 2026-05-28 is still the last substantive entry, no stay motion appears anywhere on the docket, and two independent FCC sources corroborate that the addition is still operative — the Covered List page stamped 2026-08-21 still carries the UAS entry with its 2025-12-22 inclusion date and no stay notation, and the FCC has gone on administering it (eighteen UAS Conditional Approvals between 2026-03-17 and 2026-08-21, an Order denying an extension of the foreign military-grade drone comment period on 2026-08-28, and a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing nearly $200,000 in fines against two Covered List entities the same day). One honest limit: CourtListener’s own banner says its pages are sourced from PACER and RECAP and may not be up to date, and this one was last updated 2026-07-28, so a filing in the five weeks to 2026-09-03 would not appear. The abeyance bounds that gap tightly — the court has set nothing before 2026-11-02.

www.fcc.gov was never a wall (corrected 2026-09-03, read-queue ticket 04). The earlier note recorded 403s on every path including /supplychain/coveredlist. The site opens to the full browser header set: the Covered List page returned 23k characters of prose on 2026-09-03, complete with every inclusion date, the Conditional Approvals table and the importation/marketing prohibitions table. docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/ remains open and is still where the per-event Public Notices cited above come from — they are better citations for individual additions than the list page, which is a running snapshot.

What the list page adds that the Public Notices do not. An active Conditional Approval regime: as at 2026-08-21, eighteen UAS approvals running 2026-03-17 to 2026-08-21 (SiFly, Mobilicom, ScoutDI, Verge, Sees.ai, Air6, Elevon, Blueflite, Verity, Air VEV, Innovation First, Flock Safety, ABZ Innovation, Real-Time Robotics, Ceres Air, Exedy, Parallel Flight, Ascento) and about twenty router approvals with expiry dates between 2027-10-01 and 2028-02-21 (Netgear, Adtran, eero, Calix, Nokia, Alpha Networks, Sagemcom, Miri, Arcadyan, Hitron, Vantiva, Gemtek, Gryphon, Sercomm, Humax, SpaceX/Starlink, Askey, Zyxel, WNC). That machinery is leveled on #2201, whose Quote asks for the process rather than the list.

Scan triage 2026-09-11, closed in review 2026-09-11: the component-part order. FCC final rule Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain Through the Equipment Authorization Program, FR 2026-18535, 91 FR 57798, published 2026-09-11 and effective 2026-10-13, ET Docket No. 21-232. It is the Third Report and Order, FCC 26-50, adopted 2026-07-22. The Third Further Notice recorded as the 2026-08-07 event is the same document’s other half. The triage had the Corpus record only. The review read the text on federalregister.gov.

1. Nothing on corporate names and forms is adopted. The order prohibits authorizing devices that contain a “logic-bearing hardware component” made by a producer-based Covered List entity. It requires full recertification for any change a listed entity makes to its equipment, and it extends the marketing rules and FCC-ID display to online marketplaces. White labeling, bifurcation and streamlined revocation remain proposals in the accompanying Third Further Notice. The order “declines, at this time” to ban all components, or components from any foreign-adversary entity, and “keeps the record open”.
2. “Critical infrastructure” is narrowed, on remand. Responding to the D.C. Circuit’s partial remand, the Commission “eliminates the prior ‘connected to’ language” the court found “unjustifiably broad”. The definition now covers assets used in the 16 DHS sectors to provide one of the 55 National Critical Functions (new 47 CFR 1.50001(f)). That narrows the section 889(f)(3) entries to what a court will uphold. It does not add, remove or rename an entry.
3. So the order is moved nearby, with no event. It widens what the list’s prohibitions reach without changing the list or how it handles changes in corporate names and forms, which is the half that holds this item at partial. The rung is unchanged.

The component prohibition does not reach production-location-based entries (UAS, UAS critical components, routers “produced in a foreign country”) unless the producer is separately listed. A note on #2079 records that.