A Disaster Waiting to Happen – China Caught Hiding Radios in U.S. Highway Infrastructure

​In a prior age, some politicians were accused of being so paranoid about communism that they saw “a Red under every bed.” We will leave the judgments of history to others, but it is a plain fact that today the People’s Republic of China is, if not exactly under our beds, surrounding us with potential surveillance devices embedded in everything from shipping cranes at U.S. ports to coffee pots in American hotels.

Now the Federal Highway Administration warns that “certain foreign-manufactured power inverters” and battery management systems of solar-powered highway infrastructure contain radios hidden within them. These devices power highway infrastructure including signs, traffic cameras, weather stations, solar-powered visitor areas, warehouses, and electric vehicle chargers.

This raises the possibility of not just surveillance, but of components that could be used for extensive spying or even remotely switched off, which would create an immediate freeze-up of highway traffic and possibly mass casualties.

Reuters, which first reported this FHA memo, also reports that “industry group Green Power Denmark said that unexplained electronic components had been found in imported equipment for Denmark’s energy supply network.”

Here is our advice for U.S. policymakers and industry: QUIT BUYING ANYTHING FROM CHINA THAT CAN BE WEAPONIZED. We have never before reverted to all bold caps, but it should be clear by now that seeding weaponized devices from a hostile government is a suicidal proposition. We should either take this tariff moment to make such critical infrastructure here at home, or at least buy from manufacturers from democracies (such as Mexico) that we can trust.

While writing this, we had a sudden jolt of fear – are there, in fact, reds under our bed?

Some of us own smart mattresses that report how long and how well we slept during the night, including how much of our night was spent in deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep, as well as a stream of health data. To our relief, the brand we own is American-made. But some brands of smart mattresses are made in China.
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The good news: The communists are not under your bed. The bad news: For some consumers, they may actually be your bed.

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