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Commentary
ZPMC is the largest manufacturer of cranes in the world. Its assembly yard is a vast facility on Changxing Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River in Shanghai. The massive yard has ample layout space to fabricate and assemble the iconic container cranes seen at ports around the world. Typically, the cranes are shipped assembled, and the ZPMC yard has a large wharf to load them onto specially designed, heavy-lift ships and then deliver them all over the world.
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Chinese ‘Spy Cranes’ to Be Replaced
The ZPMC cranes are replete with similar cameras that analysts in China could use to count and examine shipments. Signals could also be sent to the cranes to make them potentially unsafe or inoperable.
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“Ripping and replacing” port cranes is a much larger and more complex civil engineering effort than remediating the CCTV situation at U.S. government facilities, COOP sites, and EOCs. This will have to be done with sophisticated planning and scheduling to ensure that American ports are not disrupted in their existing commercial throughput or any contingency surges caused by international affairs such as tension in the Western Pacific.
Port Security Equals Cybersecurity
The same guidance released by the Biden administration also addressed longstanding port security issues that have fallen into the gap and seamlines between the roles and responsibilities of the U.S. Coast Guard, other parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice.
In the new guidance, the Coast Guard “will have the express authority to respond to malicious cyber activity in the nation’s MTS [Marine Transportation System] by requiring vessels and waterfront facilities to mitigate cyber conditions that may endanger the safety of a vessel, facility, or harbor.”
Volt Typhoon Cyberattack
In May 2023, the first reports of a Chinese cyberattack on critical infrastructure were made public by Microsoft, which said in a statement that the “Volt Typhoon campaign is pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises.”
The DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) made initial comments, and then a quiet time ensued—most likely because the U.S. government was convening working groups to study, assess, and make recommendations.
Starting in December 2023, the public comments of CISA Director Jen Easterly, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and the new Cyber Command/National Security Agency Director General Timothy Haugh began to reveal the outcome of this analysis period, and the officials were ready to share the findings in a loud, vocal, and unequivocal manner in multiple appearances before Congress and in public statements.
Mr. Wray was more precise when he said, “It’s difficult to know the intent of the preparation, but it was aligned with China’s broader goal to stop the United States from defending Taiwan.”
The removal of Chinese “spy cranes” and the fortification of American ports have led the Chinese to surge Volt Typhoon to ensure that they have diversity in all possible aspects of U.S. critical infrastructure.
All viewpoints are personal and do not reflect the viewpoints of any organization.
This article first appeared in Epoch Times and was reprinted with permission.