Jeffrey Chao co-founded TP-Link in China three decades ago. Today, his company’s routers sit in roughly 65 percent of American homes and small businesses — and in the crosshairs of three federal agencies that suspect those devices are a vector for Chinese espionage.

Chao has now applied for a Trump Gold Card, the administration’s $1 million fast-track to permanent residency, according to people familiar with the matter. TP-Link Systems, the California-based entity Chao runs, disclosed the application directly to the federal agencies scrutinizing its operations.

The timeline deserves attention.

The Probe

The Departments of Commerce, Defense, and Justice have all opened investigations into TP-Link. The Commerce Department has been weighing action that could lead to operational restrictions or an outright ban on product sales. In October 2025, Microsoft security researchers identified Chinese hacking groups exploiting TP-Link router vulnerabilities, reporting that “a Chinese hacking entity maintains a large network of compromised network devices mostly comprising thousands of TP-Link routers” used to target Western think tanks, government organizations, and Defense Department suppliers.

The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in Texas and Florida have piled on with their own investigations into deceptive marketing and consumer privacy.

Then, in February, the White House shelved the proposed federal ban — reportedly to avoid antagonizing Beijing ahead of a planned Trump-Xi Jinping summit.

The Card

The Trump Gold Card, launched in late 2025, offers permanent residency to anyone willing to pay a $15,000 nonrefundable processing fee followed by a $1 million “unrestricted gift” to the Commerce Department. In return, applicants receive EB-1 or EB-2 classification — the same tier reserved for individuals of extraordinary ability or advanced-degree professionals — with processing measured in weeks rather than the years typical of standard immigration channels.

The vetting is not trivial on paper. USCIS conducts biometric screening, international criminal database queries, and financial source tracing. Applicants must produce five years of bank records, 20 years of employment history, and police clearances from every country where they have lived for more than six months. The program’s own website states that “national security and significant criminal risks are a basis for revocation.”

But revocation is not the same as disqualification. The published criteria do not explicitly address whether an active national security investigation into an applicant’s company would bar approval. The Gold Card’s vetting focuses on the individual — criminal history, admissibility, source of funds — not on whether federal agencies are simultaneously investigating the applicant’s business for enabling foreign espionage.

That gap is where this story lives.

The Restructuring

Chao has spent the past two years building a case that TP-Link’s American arm is genuinely American. In 2024, he and his brother split the business: Chao took the US-headquartered entity; his brother oversees Chinese operations. The company claims the restructured US side “no longer has any affiliation” with its Chinese counterpart. Chao purchased a California home in 2018 and says he first applied for a green card in January 2025 — before the Gold Card program existed.

TP-Link has stated it welcomes government engagement and claims all product and data security functions are handled domestically. Chao has pledged to invest $700 million to build a US factory.

Bloomberg, however, found that much of the US entity’s research, development, and manufacturing still takes place in China — complicating the narrative of a clean split.

Follow the Money Both Ways

The arithmetic is straightforward. The Commerce Department is both the agency weighing whether TP-Link poses a national security threat and the agency that collects the $1 million Gold Card gift. One arm investigates; the other arm invoices.

No one has alleged that Chao’s application will receive favorable treatment because of the fee. But the structural conflict is there, sitting in plain sight on a government website that promises processing “in weeks.” Whether an active multi-agency probe into your company’s ties to Chinese intelligence is the kind of “national security risk” that triggers Gold Card revocation appears to be, for now, an open question — one that the program’s architects may not have anticipated needing to answer quite this soon.

Sources