Biden administration fears security threats at hundreds of sites
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.
“We felt there was real strategic risk here,” said Anne Neuberger, U.S. deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. “These cranes, because they are essentially moving the large-scale containers in and out of port, if they were encrypted in a criminal attack, or rented or operated by an adversary, that could have real impact on our economy’s movement of goods and our military’s movement of goods through ports.”
The claim that the China-made cranes pose a national security risk to the U.S. is “entirely paranoia,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement. “We firmly oppose the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and abusing national power to obstruct normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the U.S. Playing the ‘China card’ and floating the ‘China threat’ theory is irresponsible and will harm the interests of the U.S. itself.”
The Biden administration’s actions follow a Wall Street Journal investigation last year that revealed U.S. fears that giant cranes made by a Chinese, state-owned company in use at a number of America’s ports could present an espionage and disruption risk. Cranes at some ports used by the U.S. military were flagged as surveillance threats. Officials also raised the concern that the software on the cranes could be manipulated by China to impede American shipping or, worse, temporarily disrupt the operation of the crane.
“By design these cranes may be controlled, serviced and programmed from remote locations,” said Rear Adm. John Vann, who leads the Coast Guard cyber command, during a press briefing. “These features potentially leave PRC-manufactured cranes vulnerable to exploitation,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.