Nebraska bans all Chinese Communist Party tech from state networks

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday signed an executive order instating a sweeping ban on the use or download of software created or owned by affiliates of the Chinese Communist Party.

The ban, which applies to the state government’s devices and networks, falls in line with similar bans across other state governments in recent years designed to protect from potentially malicious software or software platforms with hidden backdoors that could allow data to be exfiltrated to enemy nation states. The most recent wave of bans has included similar prohibitions against the generative AI platform DeepSeek and other Chinese software and services, including in New York, North Carolina and Texas.

“This is about protecting Nebraska. We need to continue identifying and eliminating threats that come from the Chinese Communist Party,” Pillen, a Republican, said in a press release. “They don’t mean well, and we must ensure that America’s adversaries can’t hack our state’s data or critical digital infrastructure. This is important, ongoing work and commonsense governance.”  

In Nebraska, the ban extends an executive order Pillen signed in 2023 banning the use of technologies from the Chinese companies Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Dahua Technology.

Nebraska’s bans align with companies named in a list maintained by the Federal Communications Commission, mandated by the Secure Networks Act, a 2019 law designed to publicize foreign technology companies that pose risks to U.S. national security. In addition to Chinese companies, the list also includes the Russian antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, Inc.

Pillen’s order cites several offenses by the Chinese government, including that it has “aggressively threatened to seize Taiwan, an ally of the United States,” and its human rights violations, including against minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.