US House Forces Military To Stop Using Chinese-Made Energy Storage Batteries

This must be an election year. The MAGAlomaniacs in the US House of Representatives have forced the US military to disconnect a battery energy storage system that went into service at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina just a year ago. The reason? The batteries in the energy storage system were manufactured by CATL, which is a Chinese company and we all know every Chinese company is just a front for the Chinese Communist Party. The Repugnicrats are worried that Xi Jinping will harvest data from the BESS to learn important secrets about the Marine Corps and use it to interrupt US military operations.

Now let’s be honest here. China has made its intentions to rule the world quite clear. China is not our friend, that much is clear. It is threatening Taiwan with a military invasion. It is pursuing dissidents around the world, in some cases kidnapping them and returning them to China against their will. It flies intelligence gathering devices disguised as weather balloons across the United States. It treats some citizens like indentured servants, and that is putting it kindly. It recognizes no obligation to honor basic human rights. It has been a dictatorship for thousands of years and is proud of its ability to tell its citizens what to think, where to work, and how to live.

The problem is untangling its more nefarious policies from its core competencies. We now live in a digital age where every byte of information can be captured and shared at the speed of light. It would be naive to think the idea of stealing data or controlling computer operated systems in a way that creates disruption never occurred to Xi Jinping and his minions. But is the US defenseless against such attacks? Does it not have the means to detect malware and disable it?

China & The Yellow Peril

It is possible the House Repugnicans are hoping to leverage the fear of Asian cultures as a campaign issue. CATL has been vilified by the governor of Virginia for daring to build a battery factory in his state. After his state of the state address last year, he told reporters, “We felt that the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford as a front for China to America.” He warned of the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party, which he called “a dictatorial political party that only has one goal — global dominance at the expense of the United States.”

Youngkin noted during the speech that he banned the Chinese-owned tech services WeChat and TikTok from state-owned smartphones and warned that “Virginians also should be wary of Chinese communist intrusion into Virginia’s economy.” He called on the General Assembly to “send me a bill to prohibit dangerous foreign entities tied to the CCP from purchasing Virginia’s farmland.”

Thoughtful readers may see a connection between Youngkin’s remarks and the notion that Asians constitute a danger to western society which originated in the late 1800s. According to Wikipedia, sinologist Wing-Fai Leung explained the origins of the term “yellow peril” and the racialist ideology as follows: “The phrase….blends Western anxieties about sex, racist fears of the alien Other, and the Spenglerian belief that the West will become outnumbered and enslaved by the East.”

The academic Gina Marchetti identified the psycho-cultural fear of East Asians as “rooted in medieval fears of Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions of Europe. Yellow peril combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped, by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East.”

Last year, similar concerns created turmoil in Michigan, where Chinese battery manufacturer Gotion plans to build a new battery factory. Local residents are up in arms — quite literally — about the proposal. Ever since the word got out that the Chinese were invading Michigan, board meetings that used to be sleep-inducing affairs have become incendiary, with hundreds of angry residents threatening to call up the Michigan militia or “exercise their Second Amendment rights” if the project is not stopped. Conservatives love the idea of turning a machine gun on people they hate, never stopping to think that one day they might be on the wrong end of the gun. (See The Young Lady Of Niger.)

Many of Chapman’s constituents are now speaking in tongues as they warn their neighbors that the factory is a “Trojan Horse” and that it will be used to spy on Americans. Some in town believe it will employ cheap Chinese labor instead of local workers and will erect cooling towers to conceal ballistic missiles. We swear we are not making this insanity up.

CATL And Controversy

Power Technology says rather blandly, “Duke Energy’s shift away from CATL batteries will have significant implications for the utility’s supply chain. It could influence the broader energy storage market, which is largely dominated by Chinese companies.”

That is an understatement of epic proportions. Chinese battery companies control the supply chains for battery components and materials. They control the factories that manufacture the batteries and most of the research that will lead to the better batteries of the future and they do it all at the lowest possible cost. Can America really afford to wall itself off from Chinese battery manufacturers?

With US utility-scale battery capacity estimated at 16 GW at the end of 2023 and projected to nearly double by the end of 2024, the push to avoid Chinese batteries could present a significant supply challenge for utility operators. Despite industry opinions suggesting that the Chinese battery cells do not pose severe security risks, concerns remain about the vulnerability of the batteries’ communication systems to hacking. Security experts warn that such breaches could destabilize the electricity grid through manipulated surges and cuts in current.

The US As Walled Garden

Just a few years ago, the US bought virtually everything from foreign companies and was happy to get the products it needed at lower prices than domestic suppliers could provide. Now the wheel has turned and anything manufactured in Asia is suspect. What is happening with batteries today will be happening with electric cars tomorrow. Are we to assume that every Chinese company is a captive of the CCP, dedicated to destroying our much ballyhooed way of life? And if we do, are we admitting we cannot compete with China? That seems like a difficult position to justify.

Xenophobia is strong in America at the moment. There may be a reason to be circumspect in our dealings with Chinese companies but we should be certain that when we do so we are not committing an unforced error that keeps us dependent on fossil fuels longer than necessary. T’is a conundrum, one with no easy answers, but political posturing is probably not the best way to manage our relations with China or any other nation. We’re better than that…aren’t we?