The Port of Baltimore, where intelligence-gathering equipment was found in a search of a ship delivering ZPMC cranes.
Washington: Amid growing concern over giant Chinese-made cranes collecting information about US military equipment transported through ports, members of the ‘House China Select Committee’ will inspect these cargo cranes operating at U.S. ports across the country during a site visit to the Port of Miami to scrutinise if they pose a national security risk.
According to U.S. lawmakers, many of these cranes are being used by the military which could give Beijing a possible spying tool hiding in plain sight. These cranes have sensors that can collect information about US military equipment transported through ports through the medium of cranes, according to reports.
House China Committee lawmakers, including Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., will visit the Port of Miami to inspect the alleged security posed by these drones to the US.
The primary focus of lawmakers will be on how the Chinese Communist Party could use these infrastructures to spy on Americans or disrupt the flow of goods including possibilities to gather information about military assets of the country, sources familiar with the site visit told Fox News Digital.
The development came days after the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the Pentagon is now viewing giant cargo cranes as possible Chinese spying tools that pose a national security risk to the US.
Ever since the US shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in January, there have been growing concerns over Beijing’s surveillance techniques across the world. Pentagon officials suspect that these cranes can also provide remote access for someone looking to disrupt the flow of goods in the U.S.
Trojan horse
National security experts and Pentagon officials have compared Chinese-made ship-to-shore cranes to a Trojan horse. These cranes are inexpensive and contain sophisticated sensors that can collect, track and transmit information on the transportation of U.S. military supplies.
Cranes that load and unload containers from large ships to ports are equipped with sensors that can track the source and destination of the cargo, and this information is transmitted to the Chinese headquarters, according to media reports.
Officials have expressed concerns that China could capture information about the material being shipped in or out of the country to support U.S. military operations around the world.
Spying fears
According to The Wall Street Journal, these cranes manufactured by Shanghai Telephone Heavy Industries (ZPMC) entered the U.S. market around two decades ago, offering what industry executives described as good-quality cranes that were significantly cheaper than Western suppliers.
Ports in Virginia, South Carolina and Maryland, which are at times used by nearby US military bases, have acquired new cranes from ZPMC in the last two years. This has prompted concern within the US national-security community and FBI, people familiar with the matter told WSJ.
According to reports, almost 80 per cent of cranes currently installed in US ports are manufactured by China’s ZPMC which is a subsidiary of China Transportation Construction.
In recent years, U.S. national security officials have pointed to a range of equipment manufactured in China that could facilitate either surveillance or disruptions in the U.S., including baggage-screening systems and electrical transformers, as well as broader concerns about China’s growing control of ports around the world through strategic investments. China makes almost all of the world’s new shipping containers and controls a shipping data service, WSJ reported.
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