U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) warned the Trump administration today on social media: “Using robots made by our adversaries threaten [sic] Arkansans’ privacy and national security. Congress needs to pass my bipartisan bill that bans the government from buying these Chinese-made systems.”
Cotton co-sponsored the bill, the American Security Robotics Act, with Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who also warned: “The Chinese Communist Party has shown that they are willing to lie and cheat to get ahead at the expense of the American people and our national security. They are running their standard playbook, this time in robotics, trying to flood the U.S. market with their technology, which presents real security risks and threats to Americans’ privacy and American research and industry.”
Using robots made by our adversaries threaten Arkansans’ privacy and national security.
Congress needs to pass my bipartisan bill that bans the government from buying these Chinese-made systems. https://t.co/WISL0LF8FD
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) April 6, 2026
[NOTE: The bill does not ban China-manufactured products like humanoid robots and remote surveillance robots from purchase by retail consumers or private companies, but does block federal agencies from using them via federal grants or agreements.]
Greg Autry, who served as the White House Liaison at NASA during the first Trump administration, replied to Cotton: “Yes please! Get the CCP spy dogs out of our institutions.”
[NOTE: Shanghai-based AGIBOT Innovation Technology Co. claimed last week to have completed a rollout of 10,000 humanoid robots.]
In March, First Lady Melania Trump walked side by side with a humanoid robot from the American company Figure AI at a White House education summit. She suggested such robots could eventually play a role in children’s education.
Melania Trump walks with a robot from Figure AI to a White House event today.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 25, 2026
One of Figure AI’s top competitors in the U.S. market is Elon Musk’s humanoid robot, Tesla Optimus. In February, Musk said he plans to build “Optimus Academy” to train an army of humanoid robots.
Tesla will manufacture the Optimus 3 in the Fremont, California facility where it built the discontinued Model S and Model X vehicles, while sourcing components, in some cases, from firms in Asia. Optimus is reported to have produced nearly 1,000 humanoid robots, though during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Musk said the Optimus robots are “not in usage in our factories in a material way.”
Musk has said that the company plans to manufacture more than a million humanoid robots annually by 2027.
Just set a new PR in the lab pic.twitter.com/8kJ2om7uV7
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) December 2, 2025