The United States will work to identify "not so good" vendors which may pose risks to the national power grid after the White House repeatedly hinted that the global supply chains are too reliant on China, US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th June, 2020) The United States will work to identify "not so good" vendors which may pose risks to the national power grid after the White House repeatedly hinted that the global supply chains are too reliant on China, US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said on Wednesday.
In April, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord said the Pentagon had realized amid the COVID-19 pandemic that the United States' supply chain may be too dependent on China.
"I'll be working with our secretary of defense [Mark Esper], others and secretary of commerce [Wilbur Ross] to identify pieces of equipment that could potentially be vulnerable to cyberattacks, that could potentially be vulnerable to supply chain risks and we will be advising our utility industry what are good vendors, and what are perhaps not so good vendors. We hope over the period of time to eliminate that risk from our entire grid," Brouilette said at a joint videoconference with the chief of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol.
US President Donald Trump in May signed an executive order to boost domestic production of crucial supplies needed in response to COVID-19. In the executive order, Trump said this measure would expand and strengthen relevant supply chains within the United States that were crucial in the fight against the pandemic.
According to media reports, the new supply chain measures could be aimed against China and Chinese tech giants such as Huawei. In 2019, Washington blacklisted Huawei and about 70 of its affiliates from purchasing US technology and doing business with US companies without relevant government authorization. In May, the US Department of Commerce announced new export rules to restrict Huawei's acquisition of American technology to build its semiconductors.
