Risky Bulletin Srsly Risky Biz: Like Huawei, but for electricity
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Dec 17, 2025 Tom Uren, a policy and intelligence editor, dives deep into the troubling U.S. reliance on Chinese manufacturers for electrical grid equipment. He discusses the risks posed by Chinese hacking and the alarming intent behind recent PLA research aimed at grid sabotage. The conversation takes a turn as they explore the controversial U.S. involvement in cyberattacks on Venezuela's state oil company and critique the ineffectiveness of Russian state-backed hacktivism. Uren emphasizes the need for strategic mitigations and warns about the political misuse of security concerns.
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China's Manufacturing Dominance Creates Grid Risk
- China dominates manufacturing for many grid components, creating systemic dependence for Western electricity systems.
- That dominance combines with Chinese research imagining attacks on US grids to create an elevated strategic risk.
Manufacturer Flipped Inverters Off During Dispute
- A Chinese manufacturer remotely disabled inverters during a commercial dispute, illustrating hard commercial control over devices.
- Patrick Gray noted this action was within license terms but surprising compared with Western manufacturers' behavior.
Aggregate Risk From Underregulated Devices
- Many distributed energy devices fall below regulatory cybersecurity thresholds and escape scrutiny.
- Small vulnerable units in aggregate create material risk of cascading failures on the grid.