August 5 News (Yan Yi) - It is reported that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on a ban the import of Chinese-made optical modules. This component is widely used in data centers to achieve the conversion between electrical and optical signals. Sources revealed that the agency hopes to announce implement this ruling by the end of this year.

AI policy expert Divyansh Kaushik stated: "Optical modules do indeed pose a risk. As the scale of data construction expands, it is essential to ensure that the data center supply chain is secure from the very beginning." The U.S. government is concerned that these components could be used to data, plant malware, or disrupt the normal operation of U.S. data centers.

Optical modules are crucial to data centers because they consume less power and offer faster speeds compared traditional copper cabling. Although there are U.S.-based manufacturers such as Lumentum, Coherent, and Applied Optoelectronics, their scale and production capacity fall short of industry leader, Innolight, which holds a 27% global market share.

It is understood that the FCC aims to intercept these Chinese components before they become widely adopted U.S. AI data centers. The previous case of Huawei serves as a cautionary tale: by the time the ban was introduced, Huawei equipment had already deeply penetrated the U.. market, making the subsequent process of removing and replacing Huawei components from all systems extremely costly and time-consuming.