Three Republican senators are sounding a desperately needed alarm about another example of the Biden administration showing dangerous deference to Red China.
The Republicans’ complaints should be merely the first step in what needs to be a comprehensive effort to secure the U.S. electric grid.
Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas last week wrote to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, complaining about a late-April decision that puts the American grid at further risk of Chinese sabotage. (The Energy Department decision amounted to a hideously unwise step along the same path about which I warned in a January column.) The Biden team does so by repealing a Dec. 17, 2020 order, pursuant to a May 2020 directive by former President Donald Trump, which forbade “the acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation of specified bulk-power system electric equipment” from China.
As the senators’ letter notes, the Biden administration has provided no justification for revoking the order other than the meaninglessly vague desire to “create a stable policy environment” and “develop a strengthened and administrable strategy.” Biden’s action is also utterly confusing, as it runs contrary to the stated aims of a “100-day plan” his team released at the exact same time that boasts about supposedly aggressive steps to protect the grid.
The 100-day plan specifically identifies Chinese perfidy as a major threat to the grid. How, then, does it make any sense to acknowledge the Chinese threat at the same time one revokes an order that was protecting against the Chinese threat? It’s like saying that a vicious wolf is in the area but that in order to guard against the wolf we’ll remove the fence that keeps the wolf away.
Unless and until the 100-day plan produces actual actions that protect against Chinese threats, the plan is nothing but folderol.
What is really needed is not just to stop the use of new Chinese equipment in the elements of the U.S. grid, but to replace existing Chinese material. As grid-protection activist Michael Mabee notes, the U.S. already uses 300 large power transformers made in China, and at least 10% of New York City’s electricity is routed through a Chinese-built transformer in Bayonne, New Jersey. Mabee has filed complaint after complaint to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about the inadequacies of grid security.
Another cybersecurity expert, Joe Weiss, says the Biden executive order related to the 100-day plan is wholly lacking because it does not actually address operating systems. The order focuses on information technology, but not on equipment. Likewise, in the Hill last week, longtime homeland security official Dr. Peter Pry wrote that the U.S. grid remains critically vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse attacks.
Light should also be shined on the role of the electric utility industry, which has spent $1.2 billion lobbying during the past decade, plus hundreds of millions ($28.5 million in 2020 alone) in campaign donations in opposing steps that might deny them access to inexpensive foreign equipment. And it doesn’t help that the federal government regulatory authority for something as important to national security is so balkanized, with the federal government regulating transmission but hundreds of local authorities regulating power generation and distribution.
For now, though, it should be obvious that Trump wisely addressed at least one distinct threat by banning Chinese-made equipment. The Biden team is way off base in revoking Trump’s order without anything concrete to replace it. Not just Republicans but senators of both parties should join Cruz, Cramer, and Cotton in objecting.
