Expert: China has built in “back door” that could completely take out the U.S. electric grid

[livingston]

Expert: China has built in “back door” that could completely take out the U.S. electric grid​

USA- While much of the world, including the United States is focused on the current nightmare in Ukraine, another silent potential threat is currently hanging over the U.S. and it involves our electric grid. Once again, our reliance on Chinese products as we outsourced everything to that communist nation has left our country extremely vulnerable.

Law Enforcement Today has previously reported on electromagnetic pulse bombs, and the possibility that such a weapon could potentially take down our electric grid and wreak untold havoc. However it is our reliance on China for important components contained within that grid that has also left us in a very bad spot.
A piece in TimeNews Desk warns that by using Chinese-built components in our electric grid, they could have built in some redundant “back door” time bombs which could disable critical components of the grid.

The U.S. electric grid consists of thousands of such transformers, while less than three percent of them are the large capacity transformers; however they are responsible for transporting 60 to 70 percent of U.S. electricity.
The bad part? They are custom-made in China, and despite the best efforts of the United States to secure our networks and grids, China is able to sabotage the equipment before it even makes its way to the U.S. In effect, they have the ability and in some cases have built a “back door” into our electric grid.

Expert: China has built in "back door" that could completely take out the U.S. electric grid

Electric substations, large transformers, are manufactured in China and transported to the US; experts say that China has built in "back doors" which could disable the transformers, taking out large portions of the US electric grid

www.lawenforcementtoday.com

 

[livingston]

Folks if China produced these transformers it would seem to me that having a way to remotely disable them in a time of war would be very much of an advantage. .. Thoughts.

 

[livingston]

Biden Rescinds Trump Order Banning Chinese Communist Involvement In US Power Grid - The National Pulse

President Biden has revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to keep foreign countries and companies out of America’s bulk power systems – principally entities associated with the Chinese Communist Party – as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and...

thenationalpulse.com

President Biden has revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to keep foreign countries and companies out of America’s bulk power systems – principally entities associated with the Chinese Communist Party – as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.”​

The executive order, which executes key tenets of President Biden’s climate change agenda, was released on the former Veep’s first day in office.
Section 7 of the massive order, which includes the revocation of the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, also revokes several climate and energy-focused executive orders penned by the Trump administration.

Subpoint C notes that “Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System), is hereby suspended for 90 days.”

The Trump-era order sought to ban, replace, and set new criteria on bulk-power system (BPS) electric equipment coming from a foreign country or national that poses a national security threat.

“Foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life. The bulk-power system is a target of those seeking to commit malicious acts against the United States and its people, including malicious cyber activities, because a successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and its allies,” the introduction to the executive order read.
The move “prohibited any acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation of BPS electric equipment by any person or with respect to any property to which a foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that poses an undue risk to the BPS, the security or resiliency of U.S. critical infrastructure or the U.S. economy, or U.S. national security or the security and safety of U.S. persons.”

Biden Rescinds Trump Order Banning Chinese Communist Involvement In US Power Grid - The National Pulse

President Biden has revoked a Trump-era executive order that sought to keep foreign countries and companies out of America’s bulk power systems – principally entities associated with the Chinese Communist Party – as part of his “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and...

thenationalpulse.com

 

[prambo]

 

[Catskillkid]

I don't buy it and the reason why is our infrastructure is so shitty already China wouldn't need to do anything sophisticated to take it out. A freak ice storm knocked out the whole damn state of Texas for how long? And a bird crapping on a transformer sent the whole northeast into a blackout.

All the CCP has to do is send one of Xi's bodyguard's to break wind next to a substation and it's all over.

 

[SonOfSun]

I don't buy this. I could see a possible back door in the SCADA systems or something, but the transformers themselves? No.

 

[GOPerfect]

I say, shit or get off the pot.

 

[Truebeliever]

I don't buy this. I could see a possible back door in the SCADA systems or something, but the transformers themselves? No.

Why not? Couldn’t a signal could sent on those same power lines to device buried inside the transformer? It would only have to be in a few to take the grid down.

60 minutes did a story on an attack on the grid where an unknown group shot at some transformers which appeared to be a test run. The expert interviewed said it would take less than 20 of such attacks to take down the grid.
But I don’t know enough about the grid to say yes or no either way

 

[livingston]

I don't buy this. I could see a possible back door in the SCADA systems or something, but the transformers themselves? No.

I don't know enough about them as how one could disable the function say remotely . Flip a switch and cause it to overheat in some manner I do know that we can open up this space telescope we just launched that is million + miles away. Just even have a deadman switch inside of one we could see as possible. .. To shut down the electric grid of a country you are at war with even if only for a few weeks ... Priceless...
China has never wavered from the idea of a unified China .... War has never been off the table to achieve that.

 

[SonOfSun]

Why not? Couldn’t a signal could sent on those same power lines to device buried inside the transformer? It would only have to be in a few to take the grid down.

60 minutes did a story on an attack on the grid where an unknown group shot at some transformers which appeared to be a test run. The expert interviewed said it would take less than 20 of such attacks to take down the grid.
But I don’t know enough about the grid to say yes or no either way

Because transformers are passive components. They're basically wire windings. It's like saying the Chinese are going to back door hack my set of Chinese made pliers. How the hell to you hack hand tools with a signal?

The SCADA systems could possibly hacked/back-doored since they are computerized control systems and could be made to misconfugure the power grid to destroy hardware such as transformers.

Shooting and physical destruction of transformers is not the same thing as back door accessing them. Yes physical destruction of them could be bad news, but that's sort of obvious and could be said regarding any other object.

 

[spat]

Folks if China produced these transformers it would seem to me that having a way to remotely disable them in a time of war would be very much of an advantage. .. Thoughts.

Not sure if a large transformer has enough electronics in it to add a back door, or if any would be connected to a network anyway.

It's like saying we bought Chinese cell phone towers and they are going to hack them.

Not the radios, the towers that hold up the radios....

 

[Steal2B]

Expert: China has built in “back door” that could completely take out the U.S. electric grid​

USA- While much of the world, including the United States is focused on the current nightmare in Ukraine, another silent potential threat is currently hanging over the U.S. and it involves our electric grid. Once again, our reliance on Chinese products as we outsourced everything to that communist nation has left our country extremely vulnerable.

Law Enforcement Today has previously reported on electromagnetic pulse bombs, and the possibility that such a weapon could potentially take down our electric grid and wreak untold havoc. However it is our reliance on China for important components contained within that grid that has also left us in a very bad spot.
A piece in TimeNews Desk warns that by using Chinese-built components in our electric grid, they could have built in some redundant “back door” time bombs which could disable critical components of the grid.

The U.S. electric grid consists of thousands of such transformers, while less than three percent of them are the large capacity transformers; however they are responsible for transporting 60 to 70 percent of U.S. electricity.
The bad part? They are custom-made in China, and despite the best efforts of the United States to secure our networks and grids, China is able to sabotage the equipment before it even makes its way to the U.S. In effect, they have the ability and in some cases have built a “back door” into our electric grid.

Expert: China has built in "back door" that could completely take out the U.S. electric grid

Electric substations, large transformers, are manufactured in China and transported to the US; experts say that China has built in "back doors" which could disable the transformers, taking out large portions of the US electric grid

www.lawenforcementtoday.com

Sure seems the story is inaccurate and conflates issues. Personally, I would be more concerned with SO or DO distribution controls having vulnerability to firmware, emps, or back doors as we change out older systems.

It was written by a retired law enforcement guy but his reference source is an anonymous author.

There are issues with large power transformers (-no spares in part because of Clinton era tax laws penalizing utilities for having spares, -vulnerability to physical sabotage, long replacement lead times of 2 years before supply chain issues, -aging infrastructure with a design age of 40 years and an average current life of over 30 years) but back door control circuitry is not the threat this piece infers.

It's been years since I testified on availability/ capacity factors / reliability but a quick check of DOE data of installed transformers confirmed that at best a pittance of large transformers in the US are of Chinese origin. That may slowly changing as North America and European production wanes. The US large dielectric transformer imports exceeding 100,000kva are led by South Korea (1/3 of imports), followed by Austria, Canada, Netherlands and Mexico (each about 10%), then Spain, Japan, and Germany (each around 5%). Columbia, Brazil, and China each have about 3% of the imports. By handling Capacity, China did not make the list and was glumped in the 2% other since the units imported were smaller. Although some data suggests China's market share in the US will zoom, if their excess capacity gets diverted to projected Chinese grid growth, transformers may not be available for export.

There are multiple hurdles involved with increasing US transformer production although we were still the largest manufacturer. Steel production in the US is an issue. Corporate taxes are an issue. Some of our facilities are now foreign owned.

 

[spat]

Sure seems the story is inaccurate and conflates issues. Personally, I would be more concerned with SO or DO distribution controls having vulnerability to firmware, emps, or back doors as we change out older systems.

It was written by a retired law enforcement guy but his reference source is an anonymous author.

There are issues with large power transformers (-no spares in part because of Clinton era tax laws penalizing utilities for having spares, -vulnerability to physical sabotage, long replacement lead times of 2 years before supply chain issues, -aging infrastructure with a design age of 40 years and an average current life of over 30 years) but back door control circuitry is not the threat this piece infers.

It's been years since I testified on availability/ capacity factors / reliability but a quick check of DOE data of installed transformers confirmed that at best a pittance of large transformers in the US are of Chinese origin. That may slowly changing as North America and European production wanes. The US large dielectric transformer imports exceeding 100,000kva are led by South Korea (1/3 of imports), followed by Austria, Canada, Netherlands and Mexico (each about 10%), then Spain, Japan, and Germany (each around 5%). Columbia, Brazil, and China each have about 3% of the imports. By handling Capacity, China did not make the list and was glumped in the 2% other since the units imported were smaller. Although some data suggests China's market share in the US will zoom, if their excess capacity gets diverted to projected Chinese grid growth, transformers may not be available for export.

There are multiple hurdles involved with increasing US transformer production although we were still the largest manufacturer. Steel production in the US is an issue. Corporate taxes are an issue. Some of our facilities are now foreign owned.
View attachment 150543

Pretty sure it's impossible to EMP proof a system that by it's very nature is a continent spanning antenna.

But, if China decides to nuke us, the grid going down will probably be the least of our concerns.

A nuclear EMP attack like that would be treated the same as a full out nuclear attack, and would be responded to in kind. So I don't see the EMP as being a significant concern.

They'll either send the whole shebang, or they won't send anything.

 

[spat]

Why not? Couldn’t a signal could sent on those same power lines to device buried inside the transformer? It would only have to be in a few to take the grid down.

60 minutes did a story on an attack on the grid where an unknown group shot at some transformers which appeared to be a test run. The expert interviewed said it would take less than 20 of such attacks to take down the grid.
But I don’t know enough about the grid to say yes or no either way

If you're saying "could they plant a small bomb hidden inside the transformer that can be remotely detonated", then yes, of course you can hide a bomb in anything large enough to hide one in.

But that's not really hacking them, or putting a back door in them.

They could do the same thing with some giant, purely mechanical, gate valve installed in a pipeline too. But you don't normally call that hacking or a backdoor on something like that.

As for shooting them, yes, you can destroy one by shooting it, but that applies to just about anything, and it applies just as well to American made transformers as it does the Chinese ones.

 

[ManualF150]

I can't talk about the stuff too much, but I can say that a lot of larger substations are controlled via computer to open and close circuits. There are manual bypasses, but someone would need to enter the site to de-energize or re-energize a circuit. Along with monitoring and any type of frequency correction.

So if somehow the switch was remotely sent a de-energize command and the controller was unreachable, someone would need to be dispatched to bypass it on site.

A lot of the reasons why things have moved to computer controlled is for safety reasons.

Basically think of it as what a substation engineer would need to do back in the old days before computers if they lost communications.

 

[spat]

I can't talk about the stuff too much, but I can say that a lot of larger substations are controlled via computer to open and close circuits. There are manual bypasses, but someone would need to enter the site to de-energize or re-energize a circuit. Along with monitoring and any type of frequency correction.

So if somehow the switch was remotely sent a de-energize command and the controller was unreachable, someone would need to be dispatched to bypass it on site.

A lot of the reasons why things have moved to computer controlled is for safety reasons.

Temporarily shutting down power is one thing.

Can they destroy the transformers though ?


It's the difference between losing power for a couple days (that most people are prepared for and have already experienced more than once) and the grid going down for months, or perhaps permanently.

 

[ManualF150]

Temporarily shutting down power is one thing.

Can they destroy the transformers though ?


It's the difference between losing power for a couple days (that most people are prepared for and have already experienced more than once) and the grid going down for months, or perhaps permanently.

Other than crude lack of maintenance on a transformer (meaning no oil changes) or severe tampering, the short answer is no.

Even if under overload conditions, they've got massive sand-filled fuses and over load cutouts.

Substation transformers are overbuilt and are designed for decades of use under harsh conditions.

Transformers get struck by lightning more than people think. They survive by proper earth bonding and those fuses to a good extent.

Along with the fact that transformers are about as simple as can be, there really isn't much that can fail on them.

As far as tampering, well... you'd have a lot of work to do before getting inside of one. Lots of bolts, messy oil, not to mention it is live with many KVA and juicy voltage going through it. Unless it's an inside job, which multiple people sign off before a transformer is put back into service, it's almost impossible without someone getting fired or a bunch of people knowing that it was tampered with.

Oh, and generally speaking, if someone sabotaged one, as soon as it was put back online, it would go bang or cut a fuse.

 

[spat]

Other than crude lack of maintenance on a transformer (meaning no oil changes) or severe tampering, the short answer is no.

Even if under overload conditions, they've got massive sand-filled fuses and over load cutouts.

Substation transformers are overbuilt and are designed for decades of use under harsh conditions.

Transformers get struck by lightning more than people think. They survive by proper earth bonding and those fuses to a good extent.

Along with the fact that transformers are about as simple as can be, there really isn't much that can fail on them.

As far as tampering, well... you'd have a lot of work to do before getting inside of one. Lots of bolts, messy oil, not to mention it is live with many KVA and juicy voltage going through it. Unless it's an inside job, which multiple people sign off before a transformer is put back into service, it's almost impossible without someone getting fired or a bunch of people knowing that it was tampered with.

Oh, and generally speaking, if someone sabotaged one, as soon as it was put back online, it would go bang or cut a fuse.

I was thinking of something like the stuxnet attack we mounted against the Iranian nuclear program.

Where they would identify some specific operating point that would kill them, and run them there.

Not sure if power to them could be switched on and off fast enough to do it though.

Or if it would be even possible to find a way to damage the structure without triggering the protective (and easily replaced) fuses. Maybe playing some power factor games or something

 

[Acer-m14]

drain the oil .. xformer can no longer transform ..

 

[spat]

drain the oil .. xformer can no longer transform ..

Well, not for long anyway.

The current will flow, briefly.

 

[repete]

Why would they need a back door to destroy us when we are doing a fine job of it ourselves?

 

[Truebeliever]

Because transformers are passive components. They're basically wire windings. It's like saying the Chinese are going to back door hack my set of Chinese made pliers. How the hell to you hack hand tools with a signal?

The SCADA systems could possibly hacked/back-doored since they are computerized control systems and could be made to misconfugure the power grid to destroy hardware such as transformers.

Shooting and physical destruction of transformers is not the same thing as back door accessing them. Yes physical destruction of them could be bad news, but that's sort of obvious and could be said regarding any other object.



View attachment 150537

What I’m asking, couldn’t they put a device inside the solid material that could receive a signal and start a fire or blow up?

 

[spat]

Why would they need a back door to destroy us when we are doing a fine job of it ourselves?

They have several backdoors to destroy us.

The biggest one is code named "the big guy".

But they have others planted throughout the government, acedemia, corporate America, and the media.

Joe McCarthy was a prophet.

 

[spat]

What I’m asking, couldn’t they put a device inside the solid material that could receive a signal and start a fire or blow up?

It wouldn't even need to do that.

Just release some iron filings into the oil and the thing would self destruct.

But, it wouldn't be the easiest thing to hide.

They have done some very insidious things though, so it's possible.

But, as others have pointed out, their market penetration isn't enough to make that a major weapon, more like a harrassing instrument.

They couldn't bring down the whole grid, but maybe black out a couple cities that way.

I believe I've posted this on this forum before, but this is a master stroke. On par with Stuxnet.

"The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies - Bloomberg" Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[96coal449]

China does not need a back door. They have full access through the current administration.

Not only that, they've been buying up America for decades. I can recall elders, warning of manufacturing goods overseas instead of here.
Just before the the Jan 20th protests in Richmond, VA, China stated Americans with guns are a huge problem. Not long after, the UN headquarters in NYC had a job posting. Job description, disarmament. Requirement, must speak English.

The only thing stopping them is that pesky 2A and what unity that remains among us.