US seized Chinese-built transformer – but nobody knows why

Only a naieve fool would trust anything made in China these days. They have declared war on the world by any means. In my opinion, China is closed for business, anyone doing business with them is a traitor to humanity.

Shut them down!

Uncle Intel says US suspects China can take us off grid anytime they want. From space. And they will.

It's a transformer. It's not a computer.

China owns 99% of the world's resources of rare-earth metals.

It seems pretty clear to me that 15-20 years ago the Chinese woke up and said "We're not going to sell this stuff to anyone any more. If you want it, come and build your factories here ..."

You were doing fine until;: "mini nukes"...

....If there is a controller and switching (tapping) hardware inside. All it would take is a line of plc code connecting two phases (upon execution of that line of code) that shouldn't be shorted together. BANG the transformer and some downstream equipment would be destroyed. No explosives of any kind needed.

Does a hacked transformer or 2 have the ability to bring the entire grid down?

Does a hacked transformer or 2 have the ability to bring the entire grid down?

They probably planted mini nukes in them which would all go off at a push of the button. Or some type of mechanism which would shut them down at a push of a button. We should NOT be buying things like that from China.

I think that China is the only source. I think we dropped the ball a couple of decades ago, when we allowed China to make our power grid equipment.

Uncle Intel says US suspects China can take us off grid anytime they want. From space. And they will.

how did they get this tech??

What is your point? I am much more concerned about the Chicoms shutting down our grid and plunging us back to the dark ages. Don't see a scenario where our own government destroys our grid, but I can see one where the Chicoms do.

A transformer emp..

I believe China is the only country we buy transformers from and we don’t have any/many backups. The lead time is 18 months to have one built, and if only a couple of the larger ones go down it could compromise the whole grid

I read an article back in the 90's that the U.S. "purportedly" had manufactured thousands of PLC's specific to the electric generation industry... Chinese could install shutdown mechanisms in these transformers sold to the U.S.

US Federal Government authorities seized a 226-tonne electricity transformer made by Chinese company Jiangsu Huapeng Transformer Company at Houston port last summer and took it to Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for unspecified reasons, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The lab, which is operated by Honeywell International, handles contract work for the US Energy Department associated with threats to national security, the report added.

A US representative of the company, Jim Cai, told the newspaper that it had sold more than 7000 such transformers in the past two decades to numerous international customers.

Cai was unaware of what had happened to the transformer until he was asked for comment by the WSJ.

US President Donald Trump on 1 May signed an executive order for the DoE to find and ban devices from the power grid made by foreign countries that were considered a threat to national security.

A report in Politico said Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette had recently played down concerns from industry that new clean energy projects could be inconvenienced by the order.

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