In an address to the nation recounting the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump sought to draw a sharp contrast to his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. But while President Trump unsurprisingly was very critical of the Biden administration, he left off his list of complaints one especially problematic initiative that has profound implications for states — giving the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to our energy grid.
One of the Biden administration’s biggest priorities was to promote green energy. As part of this effort, the Pentagon announced in June 2024 that five bases in North Carolina and South Carolina would transition to carbon free electricity as part of the commander-in-chief’s “goal to power the federal government with 100 percent clean energy by 2030.” In so doing, the military announced itself as the “exclusive purchaser” of energy produced by two new solar farms. While that action may have satisfied climate activists, it also thrilled the CCP.
Reporting from Reuters last year demonstrates why. Ignore for a moment the fact that the North Carolina-based John Locke Foundation found in-state solar energy is costlier, less reliable, and significantly more impactful on the environment than natural gas and nuclear plants. Across America, Chinese-manufactured inverters, the devices which transform the energy harvested by the panels on these farms into electricity, contain self-destruct mechanisms and illicit communication devices, according to Reuters. That essentially means they can send signals across the ocean on activity occurring near them, and then a person on the other side of that point of contact can initiate the deactivation of the whole apparatus. The implications of this will no doubt reveal themselves in rapid motion should conflict in the Indo-Pacific break out and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) want to preempt any American counteraction.
In its most recent annual report, the US China Commission said that “a cyberattack on solar inverters could direct them to either cut off solar power generation assets or add more power to the grid, leading to voltage and stability issues in the local distribution system, damaged and tripped equipment, and possibly a power outage.” In a quote to The Washington Post, a former power company executive said China could compromise “other critical sector systems, including finance and communications” if it chose to. In addition to those business and personal impacts, imagine what will happen to Fort Bragg, the largest Army base in the country and one of those subjected to Biden’s order, if China chose to cut off its power supply.
The threat of CCP-linked solar components inside military bases in North Carolina is not new. In 2023, it was uncovered that a solar facility at Camp Lejeune was using batteries from a CCP-linked company. While these batteries were eventually decommissioned following pressure from Congress, it illustrates how forcing rushed moves to clean energy can easily lead to overlooking national security issues.
It is vital that states work to identify and close security vulnerabilities within their critical infrastructure. One method, known as “Pacific Conflict Stress Tests,” assembles professionals in state governments who can identify and address weaknesses that China can exploit, and Nebraska and Arizona have both successfully enacted legislation establishing such tests. Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska also published his state’s National Security Threat Assessment, which provides a helpful blueprint for the kinds of state-level actions needed to combat the CCP threat. Particularly given its important role as the home to a number of key military bases, North Carolina must prioritize developing a statewide, whole-of-government strategy to protect its citizens, infrastructure, and land from threats by the CCP, starting with doing a deep dive into all green energy projects to identify any malign Chinese components.
While President Trump must take action at the federal level to protect our homeland from the China threat, our federalist system means he does not have to do it alone. Military bases and critical infrastructure are not centralized in Washington, DC, and states have critical roles to play to ensure that China cannot harm us.
