President-elect Donald J. Trump has made big promises on Ukraine, Iran, China and crises around the globe. But he will have to make difficult choices.

The president’s latest executive order accelerates the move to mandatory compliance by software providers. It may run afoul of the Trump mandate to deregulate.

The agency imposed penalties on a company it blamed for supporting the Chinese hacking group Flax Typhoon in a 2022-23 infiltration.

The Commerce Department requested that private companies comment on the implications of the rule by March. The final decision will fall to the Trump administration.

The episode comes at a particularly sensitive moment, just as the Biden White House is dealing with one of the most far-reaching, and damaging, hacks into American infrastructure in the cyberage.

The messaging app’s popularity has soared during the war with Russia, leading Ukrainian officials to increasingly weigh Telegram’s upsides against its security risks.