NDAA Section 889 and AV —
It Is About Who Produced It, Not Where.

Section 889 of the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act prohibits federal agencies from procuring or using certain telecommunications and video surveillance equipment and services. It is implemented in FAR Subpart 4.21 with contract clauses at FAR 52.204-24, 52.204-25, and 52.204-26.

Unlike the Trade Agreements Act, Section 889 is not about where a product was made. It is about who produced it. A product manufactured entirely in a designated country can still be prohibited if the producing entity is covered.

Five are named in the regulation at 48 CFR 4.2101: Huawei Technologies Company and ZTE Corporation (telecommunications equipment, with no purpose qualifier), and Hytera Communications Corporation, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company, and Dahua Technology Company (video surveillance and telecommunications equipment, for public safety, security of government facilities, physical security surveillance of critical infrastructure, and other national security purposes) — including any subsidiary or affiliate of those entities.

A sixth, open-ended category covers equipment or services from any entity the Secretary of Defense reasonably believes to be owned or controlled by, or otherwise connected to, the government of a covered foreign country. The list is not closed at five.

Part A (effective 13 August 2019) prohibits agencies from procuring or obtaining equipment, systems, or services that use covered equipment as a substantial or essential component, or as critical technology. It governs what the government buys.

Part B (effective 13 August 2020) prohibits agencies from contracting with an entity that uses covered equipment anywhere in its own operations — regardless of whether that use is in performance of a federal contract. It is entity-level, it reaches a contractor's own facilities including non-U.S. operations, and it is the one that surprises people.

Directly, it binds federal agencies and their contractors. Indirectly, it reaches much further: state and local recipients of federal grant and loan funds are frequently prohibited from using those funds for covered equipment, and many state agencies have adopted equivalent restrictions in their own procurement codes. If any part of your funding is federal, assume it applies and verify with your grant administrator. State and local government AV.

Video surveillance equipment is expressly covered — named in the regulation for Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua. In AV terms that means cameras produced by those entities or their subsidiaries and affiliates. Telecommunications equipment is expressly covered for Huawei and ZTE.

Video management systems are covered where produced by a covered entity, and covered as a service under paragraph (3) where the service uses covered equipment. Critically, a clean VMS from a non-covered vendor that manages Hikvision cameras is still a prohibited system, because FAR 4.2102(a)(1) reaches any system using covered equipment as a substantial or essential component.

Displays and projectors are not a listed category. None of the named entities is a mainstream display manufacturer, and presentation hardware is neither telecommunications nor video surveillance equipment on its face. A display could be pulled in only if it embedded covered telecom or surveillance componentry. Treat any blanket claim that Section 889 bans certain display brands as unsupported.

Because the covered categories map almost exactly onto AV product lines. Pan-tilt-zoom cameras, video surveillance and management systems, and video transmission components are core AV products, and the covered entities are among the largest manufacturers in the global camera market. Most agencies first encountered Section 889 as a network and telecom issue and never audited the AV and physical security stack, which is where the actual exposure sits.

This is the hardest question in Section 889 and we will answer it honestly rather than pretend the regulation is clearer than it is.

The prohibition attaches to equipment "produced by" the named entities, including any subsidiary or affiliate. It does not say "branded by" or "sold by." The defensible reading is that a camera physically manufactured by a covered entity and sold under a third party's brand is still produced by a covered entity and is therefore covered — rebranding does not change who produced it.

But "built on a covered entity's platform" is a spectrum. A fully Hikvision-manufactured unit with a different logo is a different case from a third-party camera using a covered entity's system-on-chip or firmware stack, and the regulation provides no test for the latter. There is no authoritative guidance resolving it. Our position: require a written manufacturer attestation identifying the actual producing entity, and where material risk remains, escalate to your contracting officer for a determination or a waiver under FAR 4.2104. Anyone telling you this is simple has not read the rule.

At product selection, before a component reaches a drawing. We require manufacturer attestation of the producing entity for cameras and video management components, avoid covered entities and their known subsidiaries and affiliates outright, and document the screening in the submittal package. We also audit existing installed inventories on request — and we will tell you when something already in your building is a problem.

Under FAR 52.204-24 an offeror makes two representations: paragraph (d)(1), whether it will or will not provide covered equipment or services to the government under the resulting contract (the Part A representation), and paragraph (d)(2), after conducting a reasonable inquiry, whether it does or does not use covered equipment or services anywhere (the Part B representation). FAR 52.204-26 carries parallel representations, with the Part B representation made annually in SAM.

"Reasonable inquiry" is doing real work, not checking a box. Confirm the exact mechanics for your solicitation with your contracting officer, particularly the interaction between the annual SAM representation and per-solicitation representations.

Do not quietly leave it in place. Inventory what you have, identify the producing entity for each device rather than the brand on the bezel, document the finding, and raise it with your contracting officer or grant administrator. Remediation is usually replacement; FAR 4.2104 provides for waivers in limited circumstances with agency-head approval. We perform these audits and will give you an inventory with producing-entity identification you can act on.

The regulation prohibits procuring equipment, systems, or services that use covered equipment as a substantial or essential component of any system. Whether a single camera makes the whole system prohibited is a determination for your contracting officer against those words. Practically, in most AV and surveillance deployments the cameras are not incidental — they are the system — so the conservative and usually correct answer is yes.

No. They are independent and both can apply. TAA restricts country of origin; Section 889 restricts specific producers regardless of origin. A camera manufactured in a TAA-designated country by a covered entity fails Section 889. A camera from a non-covered manufacturer built in Vietnam fails TAA. See our TAA compliance guide.