"Washington Tackles a New National Security Threat: Chinese-Made Cranes" - by CWP alum Isaac Kardon
Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration rolled out a coordinated set of efforts to mitigate cybersecurity risks to U.S. port infrastructure and supply chains. These plans included an ambitious, international project to improve U.S. manufacturing competitiveness in a strategic sector: port equipment.
The primary and explicit motivation for these actions, according to national security officials, arises from the complex threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, even the fairly strong remedies proposed are likely to fall well short of the mark without extraordinary compliance from unenthusiastic commercial actors. There is also no timeline for producing a viable, technical substitute for China’s outsized role in U.S. maritime transport systems.
The administration’s efforts should be assessed in the context of its wider push to protect vital supply chains and diminish the growing risk of attacks on critical infrastructure. The key new element introduced last week was a presidential executive order and its finding “that the security of the United States is endangered by . . . persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns” targeting American ports. The order establishes new regulatory authorities for the Department of Homeland Security and authorizes U.S. Coast Guard officials to create new rules imposing minimum cybersecurity requirements for port users. It further empowers the Coast Guard to inspect and control vessels and shoreside activities on the basis of even “suspected cyber threat.”
- FEBRUARY 28, 2024
- COMMENTARY
Isaac B. Kardon, Ph.D., (孔适海博士) is a senior fellow for China studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is concurrently adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and was formerly assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC), where he served as a research faculty member in the China Maritime Studies Institute.
Isaac’s research centers on the People’s Republic of China’s maritime power, with specialization in maritime disputes and the international law of the sea, PRC global port development, PLA overseas basing, and China-Pakistan relations. His writing appears in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, the Naval War College Review, as well as other scholarly and policy publications. Isaac’s book, China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order (Yale, 2023) analyzes whether and how China is “making the rules” of regional and global order.
At Carnegie, Isaac is building on his foundation of research on China in the maritime domain to explore China’s role in the wider global commons. High seas, deep seabed, polar regions, and orbital space are among the “strategic frontier issues” prioritized by China’s leadership—and thus key sites to observe China’s interests in and influence on vital global rules, norms, and standards. China’s interest in leading the nascent regime for deep sea mining is a particular area of research focus. He is also continuing “past the pier” on his existing stream of research on PRC ports to further study China’s development of transport and communications infrastructure networks with dual civilian and military functions.
Isaac earned a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, an M.Phil in modern Chinese studies from Oxford University, and a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College. He was a China & the World post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University, and has held visiting appointments at NYU School of Law, Academia Sinica, and the PRC National Institute for South China Sea Studies. He studied Chinese (Mandarin) at Peking University, Tsinghua University, Hainan University, and National Taiwan Normal University.
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