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Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday designed to strengthen cyber security at US ports and directed billions of dollars into new infrastructure amid concerns that hackers from China could exploit the facilities and wreak havoc on supply chains.
The announcement comes just days after FBI director Christopher Wray said his bureau was “laser-focused” on preventing Chinese efforts to use malicious software to disrupt critical US infrastructure.
The White House said the moves would include investment of more than $20bn over the next five years into improving US port infrastructure, including producing more port cranes domestically. The money will come from the $1.2tn 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
The executive order would “bolster the security of the nation’s ports” and “strengthen maritime cyber security, fortify our supply chains and strengthen the United States industrial base”, the White House said.
“The security of our critical infrastructure remains a national imperative in an increasingly complex threat environment.”
The move to beef up port security comes against a backdrop of trade and geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, despite US diplomatic delegations to China in recent months and a summit between Biden and President Xi Jinping in San Francisco last year.
Biden has made efforts to break US reliance on Chinese supply chains and manufacturing capacity central to his administration’s strategy to revitalise US industry and domestic production of critical technologies such as semiconductors.
At the same time, leading lawmakers in the US Congress have also sought to increase scrutiny of American companies’ investments in China, in a bid to prevent Wall Street capital reaching the Chinese military.
Wednesday’s executive order expands the powers of the US department of homeland security to beef up cyber security standards at ports. The White House also said that the US Coast Guard would issue a new directive to bolster security requirements for Chinese-built cranes already operating at strategic seaports.
The money to be ploughed into the port infrastructure would support Paceco Corp, a US subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsui, to produce domestic cargo cranes, the White House said on Wednesday.
The administration noted that while increasingly complex systems at ports of entry had “revolutionised the maritime shipping industry and American supply chains by enhancing the speed and efficiency of moving goods to market”, the “increasing digital interconnectedness of our economy and supply chains” had also “introduced vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have cascading impacts on America’s ports, the economy, and everyday hard-working Americans”.
In an interview last week, FBI director Wray said that the US had recently disrupted a Chinese hacking network called Volt Typhoon that had targeted US infrastructure including the electricity grid and water supply. Wray said the network had been one of many such efforts by the Chinese government to damage US infrastructure.
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