The world’s electronic device manufacturing processes are largely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, which has proven to be unscrupulous in its pursuit of power. We tend to ignore the attendant perils for reasons of convenience and budget, but we do so at our own grave risk.
The U.S. Treasury Department has hinted that technology from China should be rejected because of the higher risk it entails.
“OCCIP encourages stakeholders in the U.S. financial system to adopt a risk-based approach to protecting the confidentiality of their customers’ data, the integrity of their networks, and the availability of their services,” the Treasury Department said in this month’s letter about the PAX investigation. “Banks and financial service providers should apply this risk-based approach to their supply chains.”
While such warnings are welcome, they are entirely insufficient. We need laws and executive orders that mandate and provide for a fully secure technological environment for America and our allies. Our information security depends upon U.S. and allied control and protection of all information technology, from seed investment, to ownership, hardware manufacture, and the writing and operation of software that gives life to our networks. Nothing else will do.
It is unconscionable that U.S. and allied governments continue in their failure to protect our democratic communities from unscrupulous China-linked technology manufactures, including software like TikTok and hardware like computers, phones, and credit card machines, at the expense of American and allied privacy, workers, and the diversity of our industrial ecosystems, and those of our allies.
Our democratic governments must get smart fast, or the loss to China will be irreversible, and ultimately entail the loss of democracy itself.
Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. He authored “The Concentration of Power” (forthcoming in 2021) and “No Trespassing,” and edited “Great Powers, Grand Strategies.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/no-more-china-tech-57-million-credit-card-machines-likely-compromised_4090346.html
