WASHINGTON—A proposed wind farm project in West Texas has become a potential national security issue due to its Chinese owner who has ties to the communist regime in Beijing and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), experts say.
A CFIUS panel chaired by the Treasury Department reviewed the acquisition and found that the wind farm didn’t pose a national security threat. However, an expert familiar with the project in Texas told The Epoch Times that there are a number of potential national security concerns about the Chinese control over the land.
The first concern is that the wind farm will be generating electricity, hence, it involves critical infrastructure and poses a risk to the Texas electric grid. Potential cyberattacks on the electrical grid could disrupt power utility operations, resulting in large-scale power outages.
In addition, allowing a Chinese company to connect to the U.S. power grid raises serious cybersecurity concerns. Outgoing Republican Rep. Will Hurd of Texas has repeatedly warned about the project, urging the government to “prevent foreign cyberattacks on Texas energy infrastructure.”
“Allowing an adversary to connect to our power grid enables the attacker to perform a false data injection attack—where the attacker spoofs the system’s monitoring tools to falsely think activity is happening on the grid,” he wrote.
On May 1, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to address such “malicious” cyberattacks on the U.S. bulk-power system.
He highlighted risks, stating that “a successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and its allies.”
About 95 percent of land in Texas is privately owned; private ownership combined with loose regulations in the state makes property purchases easier for foreign buyers.
The planned wind farm is situated within 30 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, and also is in close proximity to Laughlin Air Force Base, the Air Force’s largest pilot training facility, which could pose several issues, according to national security experts. These issues include cybersecurity threats against flight training, collecting intelligence on flight patterns and pilots, as well as electronic surveillance of the Mexican border.
“Aside from gathering intelligence on U.S. border security operations and plugging into Texas’s critical infrastructure, including its electrical grid, China could use Sun’s wind farm venture as cover to collect intelligence on nearby Laughlin Air Force Base, which is the Air Force’s premier training facility and graduates hundreds of pilots per year,” he wrote.
Texas lawmakers, military officials, local leaders, and activists have been tracking this case for the past two years.
“It has a high fence, a large hunting lodge, and jet runway, and he reportedly visits periodically,” the report stated.
A Moody’s Investors Service report dated Nov. 4 showed that 40.9 percent of GH America’s parent company Guanghui Group, which is controlled by Sun, will be acquired by Shenergy, a state-owned enterprise owned by the Shanghai government.
“If the acquisition is completed, Shenergy will become the second-largest shareholder of Guanghui,” the report stated.
Lawmakers requested a classified briefing to address the national security concerns.