Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has officially decided that his busy schedule of dodging legal hurdles is finally clear enough to tackle the real menace facing the Lone Star State: affordable Wi-Fi. In a move that absolutely nobody saw coming—unless you’ve been paying attention to the GOP’s “Everything I Don’t Like is a Chinese Spy” bingo card—Texas is suing TP-Link. The core of the argument? That TP-Link is “masking” its Chinese connections and acting as a digital Trojan Horse for Beijing.

Let’s start with the “masking” claim, because it’s a masterclass in unintentional comedy. Paxton’s lawsuit suggests that TP-Link is trying to pull a fast one by moving its global headquarters to the U.S. and setting up shop in Vietnam. Apparently, in the world of Texas litigation, “global corporate restructuring to mitigate geopolitical risk” is actually code for “hiding in plain sight like a cartoon villain wearing a fake mustache.” TP-Link was founded in Shenzhen in 1996. This isn’t a classified document; it’s a Wikipedia page. If moving your HQ to California constitutes “masking,” then half of Silicon Valley is currently in witness protection.

The lawsuit’s most dramatic flair is the claim that these routers are an “open window” for Chinese intelligence. It’s a bold take, assuming that the Ministry of State Security is desperately dying to see your “Home Office 2” network traffic or your 3:00 AM search history for “how to fix a leaky faucet.” While state-sponsored cyberattacks are a very real, documented threat, the logic here implies that a router’s country of origin is a magical portal for hackers. By this standard, we should probably start investigating our smart toasters and the “Made in China” labels on our “Come and Take It” flags. If Texas is truly worried about “open windows,” maybe they should look into the fact that the vast majority of consumer networking hardware—regardless of the brand—is manufactured in the exact same geographic clusters.

Then there’s the assumption that TP-Link’s manufacturing shift to Vietnam is some sort of elaborate ruse. In the business world, we call this “diversifying the supply chain” to avoid the very tariffs and lawsuits that people like Paxton love to throw around. But in this legal filing, it’s treated like a tactical retreat. If a company follows the rules, moves its operations to the U.S., and hires American workers, it’s still apparently “misleading.” It seems the only way for TP-Link to satisfy the Texas AG would be to prove its routers were hand-carved out of Texas limestone by a guy named Dale.

The irony here is thicker than a bowl of humid Houston chili. While Texas fights to protect consumers from the “hidden” dangers of a well-known electronics giant, actual cybersecurity experts have been screaming for years about the lack of standardized security protocols across *all* consumer-grade routers, regardless of whether they were born in Shenzhen or San Jose. Most routers ship with “admin/password” as the default login; that’s not a Chinese conspiracy, that’s just lazy engineering and poor consumer hygiene.

Ultimately, this lawsuit feels less like a shield for national security and more like a political press release masquerading as a legal document. It relies on the assumption that American consumers are too incompetent to understand that global companies have complex origins. If Ken Paxton is truly worried about deceptive marketing and “masking” the truth, he might find more success looking in a mirror than looking inside a router. But hey, at least while your Wi-Fi is being sued, you can rest easy knowing that Texas is tackling the “real” issues—like making sure your $40 Archer AX10 doesn’t have a secret communist agenda.