THE BREAKDOWN: U.S. Senators Rick Scott and Dave McCormick have requested an FCC investigation into security risks linked to health wearables and medical devices manufactured or containing parts from China. The lawmakers warn that biometric data collected from popular consumer items—ranging from smartwatches to glucose monitors—could potentially be accessed by the Chinese government under its domestic cybersecurity laws.
Two U.S. lawmakers are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to look into the data security risks of popular fitness trackers, smartwatches, and remote medical devices that rely on Chinese-made technology.
Senate Aging Committee Chairman Rick Scott and Senator Dave McCormick sent a formal letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr requesting an immediate briefing on the issue. They expressed concern that sensitive biological data belonging to millions of Americans, particularly senior citizens, could be exposed to foreign government surveillance.
The security concerns focus on the massive amount of personal information these devices gather every day. Modern wearable tech tracks real-time data including heart rates, location, blood pressure, sleep cycles, and blood sugar levels. Because Chinese domestic cybersecurity laws require companies operating inside China to hand over data to the government on demand, lawmakers argue that any device carrying Chinese components creates an automatic security vulnerability.
In their letter to the FCC, Scott and McCormick highlighted the direct risk to consumers: “While consumers, including seniors, believe that their health wearables may be completely secure, the unfortunate reality indicates that in all likelihood, the most intimate details of their health may be accessible by a foreign adversarial government… In the PRC’s case, their domestic cybersecurity law compels companies to provide access to their data and technology to the central government upon demand, which means that every device sold by a PRC-based wearable manufacturer, and any sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) is potentially accessible to Beijing, with or without the user’s knowledge or consent.”
The warning extends past basic consumer fitness bands to specialized health equipment. The senators asked the FCC to examine multiple categories of tech, including personal emergency response pendants, remote blood pressure monitors, continuous glucose monitors, and smart hearing aids. Low-cost Chinese manufacturing has heavily impacted the global supply chain, and only three of the top ten global Internet of Things module manufacturers operate completely independent of Chinese state influence. One of those remaining three companies left the market last year.
Specific tech firms were singled out in the congressional request. The letter pointed to major Chinese technology brands like Xiaomi and its affiliate Zepp Health, which distributes Amazfit smartwatches in the United States. Lawmakers cited a June 2025 peer-reviewed study from the journal npj Digital Medicine, which evaluated 17 wearable manufacturers across 24 privacy benchmarks and ranked Xiaomi and Huawei as having the highest cumulative privacy risks.
The letter also referenced a January 2025 fact sheet from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency regarding the Contec CMS8000, a Chinese-manufactured remote patient monitor used in healthcare. The federal agency previously warned that analysts found an embedded backdoor function within the device’s firmware that could allow user data to spill over to IP addresses inside China or allow patient data to be modified remotely.
With global shipments of wearable devices projected to hit 625.4 million units by 2027, lawmakers are worried about a potential surge of low-cost Chinese health hardware entering the U.S. market through bidding applications for programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The senators requested that the FCC look into whether certain categories of these connected health products and their underlying transmitters should be added to the official federal Covered List, which restricts technologies deemed a threat to national security. The FCC has been asked to respond and schedule a briefing for the Senate Special Committee on Aging by July 15, 2026.
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