Dustin Volz, Gordon Lubold, and Doug Cameron of The Wall Street Journal are reporting the U.S. is investing billions to replace China-made cranes at the nation’s ports. They write:
The Biden administration plans to invest billions in the domestic manufacturing of cargo cranes, seeking to counter fears that the prevalent use of China-built cranes with advanced software at many U.S. ports poses a potential national-security risk.
The move is part of a set of actions taken by the administration Wednesday that is intended to improve maritime cybersecurity. They include a U.S. Coast Guard directive to mandate certain digital-security requirements for deployed foreign-built cranes at strategic seaports, as well as an executive order by President Biden setting baseline cybersecurity standards for computer networks that operate U.S. ports.
Administration officials said more than $20 billion would be invested in port security, including domestic cargo-crane production, over the next five years. The money, tapped from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021, would support a U.S. subsidiary of Mitsui, a Japanese company, to produce the cranes, which officials said would be the first time in 30 years that they would be built domestically. [….]
“Increasingly, the Chinese are not merely seeking access to our networks; they are pre-emptively positioning to compromise and control them,” Singleton said in his testimony. “As a result, China is poised to impede the mobilization of American military forces, foment a state of disarray, and redirect national attention and resources in both war and short-of-war scenarios.”
Read more here.
