The U.S. government is taking steps to ban imports of foreign-made humanoid robots and power inverters, primarily targeting China. Power inverters might not seem exciting, but they’re crucial. There’s a real fear that robots and power inverters linked to U.S. infrastructure could be used for surveillance or remote control by foreign governments, especially China. U.S. firms like Figure AI and Apptronik are hustling to deploy humanoid robots in factories, but building them domestically is costly. A ban on foreign humanoid robots would essentially give domestic manufacturers a protected market to develop in.