Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Thursday announced he issued an executive order to ban the state government and its contractors from using equipment and services produced by a list of companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Pillen, a Republican, said in a
statement the executive order will keep the CCP from “using technology to infiltrate and influence” Nebraska’s infrastructure.
“I will continue to find opportunities to improve Nebraska’s infrastructure and technology grid while remaining vigilant in protecting our state’s security,” he added.
The companies concerned are those listed on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) “Covered Equipment or Services List” that was
first published in March 2021 as required by the Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, signed under the Trump administration. The list includes equipment or services deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to national security or the security and safety of U.S. citizens.
Companies on the list
include Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, and Dahua Technology, as well as their subsidiaries and affiliates.
The FCC in
March 2022 added China’s China Telecom (Americas) Corp. and China Mobile International USA to the list, and in
September 2022 added China Unicom and Pacific Network/ComNet to the list.
Companies on the FCC’s list are also unable to receive new equipment licenses, due to the “Secure Equipment Act of 2021” President Joe Biden
signed in November 2021. The FCC will no longer review or approve any authorization application for equipment to the companies on the covered list.
“Each of these companies are owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and are on the Federal Communications Commission’s Covered List, which includes companies that are considered a risk to national security,” Pillen’s office said in a release on Thursday.
The executive order (
pdf) said the FCC’s list is used to “prohibit communications equipment deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to national security from being authorized for importation or sale in the United States.”
It said that these communications equipment and services of the companies on the list, as well as their subsidiaries or affiliates, can be used to “commit malicious cyber-enabled actions, including economic and industrial espionage, against Nebraska and its people.”
The order took effect immediately upon its issuance on Feb. 22.
Many institutions in the United States continue to buy untrustworthy Chinese technology. According to a
report from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), published in October 2022, at least 1,681 state and local agencies purchased equipment between 2015 and 2021 that are prohibited under Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The federal measure prohibits federal agencies from using equipment and services from the same five Chinese tech companies that were first flagged by the FCC on its list in March 2021.
According to the CSET report, at the time, only five states—Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Vermont—have “enacted measures to limit the procurement of foreign [information and communications technology and services] on national security grounds, and some of these existing policies contain loopholes that would allow untrustworthy technology to slip into government networks.”
“If the goal is to keep this untrustworthy foreign technology from entering our critical systems and networks more broadly, we need to have a more cohesive, nationwide approach that involves the federal government, as well as other levels of government and then private industry,” Jack Corrigan, a research analyst at CSET and a co-author of the report,
said on Jan. 18 at a webinar hosted by GCN, a media brand focused on public sector information technology.
