Texas is expanding its list of prohibited technologies for state employees in an effort to protect its citizens from the Chinese Communist Party and other hostile foreign actors, according to a statement on Jan. 26.

Gov. Greg Abbott has added shopping platforms Shein and Temu, international business-to-business online marketplace Alibaba, battery maker CATL, TP-Link hardware and software, artificial intelligence systems, and several more technologies to Texas’s blacklist.

“Rogue actors across the globe who wish harm on Texans should not be allowed to infiltrate our state’s network and devices,” Abbott said.

The governor coordinated with Vice Adm. TJ White, chief of Texas Cyber Command, in updating the prohibited technologies list. The agency was named by Abbott on Jan. 20 as the lead in identifying further technologies posing a threat to the state’s sensitive information.

“The purpose-built agency’s sole mission is to operationally meet and counter the ever-growing cyber threat and wholistically enhance the state’s cybersecurity posture, coordination, and strategy,” Abbott wrote in a Jan. 20 letter to state officials.

The Texas governor established the Texas Cyber Command in June 2025 with his signing of a state House bill and a $135 million investment.

White said in the Jan. 26 statement that his and Texas Cyber Command’s mission is clear: protect citizens.

“As [Texas Cyber Command] works to stand up its full arsenal of operational assets, we are pleased to lead this effort to prevent cyber attacks that have the potential to exfiltrate sensitive information to bad actors across the globe,” White said.

With the original TikTok ban from state-owned devices and networks in December 2022, Abbott also barred any successor application developed by ByteDance, a Chinese-owned internet technology company.

In January 2025, the governor added to his restricted list of technologies on government-issued devices to include artificial intelligence (AI) and social media apps affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.

“Hostile adversaries harvest user data through AI and other applications and hardware to exploit, manipulate, and violate users and put them at extreme risk,” Abbott said on Jan. 26. “I am expanding the prohibited technologies list to mitigate that risk and protect the privacy of Texans from the People’s Republic of China.”

Texas Cyber Command conducted a threat assessment in identifying the latest prohibited technologies that include Shein, Temu, Alibaba, battery maker CATL, and TP-Link hardware and software.

Other technologies now banned are SenseTime, Megvii, CloudWalk, Autel, Wuhan Geosun LiDAR, Yitu, iFlytek, Uniview, Zhipu, Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Xiaomi, Gotion High Tech, Baidu, RoboSense LiDAR, Hisense, TCL, Baichuan, StepFun, MiniMax, Moonshot AI, and NucTech.