Biden gives Chicoms access to US electric grid

 Washington Examiner:

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.

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Giving China access to the grid is a twofold mistake.  Their equipment is shoddy and could be capable of shutting down portions of the grid for their benefit.   See other post today on China's engineering capabilities below.