U.S. to invest billions to replace China-made cranes at nation's ports | Hacker News Reader

U.S. to invest billions to replace China-made cranes at nation's ports

wsj.com

127 pointsimpish9208129 comments

Not just re-controller them?

This is a right to repair issue. Can't trust the remote third party maintenance service.

If they don't just re-controller them and replace the entire structure, we've gone insane. China wouldn't care that they're not following contract protocol. Just nationalize them. Really this should have never happened in the first place.

Who owns the cranes, though? Dubai World Ports, in some cases.[1] China does not, apparently, own any ports in the US directly at the moment, although for a while COSCO had a terminal at Long Beach. Worldwide, a huge number of ports are owned by Chinese companies, financed by the government of China, or both. This is unsurprising given the size of China's shipping industry, but it's also part of a policy to increase the worldwide influence of China.

[1] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/uae-purchase-american-port-...

Perhaps, but America is a state where the Rule of Law has power. Undermining the Rule of Law for individual cases like this is not worth it.

The Rule of Law includes provisions for national security and for contracts violations. They can break a contract and pay compensation without literally replacing cranes.

If Chinese cranes are an issue at all, then re-controllering extant cranes is just a half measure and the proper solution is to make sure we have a suitable source for cranes in the future. Might as well give that domestic crane source some business now, and work out any problems now rather than kicking the can down the road.

Major infrastructure resources should be open source in the sense that the full source should be available to the owner/operator of the infrastructure (not free, just available). Should apply to any national infrastructure deemed critical for defense.

Of course it should. And anyone with IQ with more than two digits knows this. But here we are, in a situation where corporate interests and national security are vastly at odds. Wait until proprietary AI really hits home.

"Wait until proprietary black-box statistics machines really hits home."

I think the title buries the lede... FTA, the cranes have sensors that can track the origin and destination of a container. The US military, which reasonably would want to unload cargo at any port in the USA, does not want their logistics to be trackable by anyone but them. It would seem that currently if they wanted to send or receive a shipment of secret goods, their options are increasingly limited as to where it can be routed.

Yes, that is the actual issue. Here's the relevant part of the story.

>The U.S. military has been concerned about the cranes for years and has made efforts to skirt ports with the China-made cranes as best as possible, according to the senior U.S. military commander who oversees the military’s logistics operations.

>The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel to determine exactly where the military is shipping it, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told the Journal last year.

Why do we not just remove the RFID radios and cameras from the cranes, or just not allow them to call home?

This is a problem that doesn't require billions in investment to solve, but rather a wire cutter.

> just remove the RFID radios and cameras from the cranes

Because they require these to work.

> or just not allow them to call home?

I can't say for sure, but I believe they already don't call home: this is also why building a solution to block them from "what if they started to call home" doesn't work.

> Because they require these to work.

What if its wrapped in aluminium?:0

Just guessing that the software forces you to put in tracking information for every item. If it can't read it, you'll have to input the stuff manually. I bet they make that interface painful too.

If they don't call home, then the foreign interests wouldn't be getting the data, I think? If the concern is access to inferred logistics and crane telemetrics, then the solution would still seem to be removing access to the data or retrofitting new controls systems to the cranes, and not replacing the entire crane.

Or just design a container whose RFID identity changes between being loaded onto the ship and being unloaded at the next port, making tracking impossible.

Could be as simple as telling the captain of the ship to swap the RFID modules between two containers during the voyage.

Like any system that is "monitored", it also presents the opportunity to feed disinformation to an adversary; what's labelled as submarine technology heading for one place is really anti-drone weaponry heading to a different front thousands of miles away.

The volume and timing of containers is also important and leaks a lot of information. The weights probably have to be accurate too.

Then, besides this, the whole thing is a bad idea. The Chinese will destroy these cranes in the event of a war with the US.

> destroy these cranes in the event of a war

Indeed you are right. And I was once laughed out of security meeting for suggesting that allowing certain nations to build the control systems for one of our nuclear power plants might have issues.

TBH, I think the laughter was very, very nervous and I distinctly heard the sound of a penny dropping.

[0] https://www.punchline-gloucester.com/articles/aanews/edf-hin...

Even if you swap RFID identities during transit, the location of each container on the ship doesn't change much during any voyage, so this wouldn't materially change things: the tracker just has to update the ID references with the locations of the containers in the unloading port.

If the location of the container changes while the ship is underway, you've got bigger issues than RFID tracking!

Since the cranes "know" the physical location of each container when it is loaded and unloaded, I suspect the CCP can update their container tracking software ~100X faster than the Pentagon can implement a decent RFID-changing system.

Do you have any idea how many containers can go on a single cargo ship?

This sounds a lot like suggesting a Walmart manager can “just quickly stick encrypted payload QR codes over each EAN barcode in the store”.

> >The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel

Everybody can do that. Here are sites for tracking a container.[1][2]

Many people need to know where containers are. Ship operators, ports, railroads, truckers, customs officials in multiple countries, customs brokers... It's not usually a big secret. The military may operate outside the commercial system at times, but probably with their own vessels.

[1] https://www.track-trace.com/container

[2] https://www.searates.com/container/tracking/

A reasonable concern.

It has often struck me that intelligence could also be gathered using civilian infrastructure. There are a lot of cameras out there, things like cars are tracked. Overall traffic movements, particular images showing something like a military vehicle, and an individuals private vehicle's movements can all yield a lot of information if a lot is available.

HikVision [0] comes to mind.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63749696

Exactly who I was thinking of.

That ban on installing their equipment on government property is a good idea, but they are all over the place, often on entrances to large buildings so lots of views of streets.

Oh, HikVision, the happy, cheerful Big Brother.

For schools: [1]

For roads: [2]

Their own wuxia.[3]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scoM0sL-HGg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4s83ECKblo

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAuH6FDhgw

Which is why the forced digitalisation of everything, accompanied in almost all cases by centralisation, poses very big strategic risks that almost no-one in a position of power is willing to openly talk about.

In the Eastern-European capital where I'm living (EU and especially NATO member bordering Ukraine) the local mayor's office has implemented a parking verification system which involves a few Town Hall cars driving around with "AI"-cameras attached and filming almost everything on sight, automatically identifying number-plates. I'm pretty sure that that system and the data stored there is a lot less secure compared with what some special security service would have put in place, and, yet, the data stored in there (basically the real-time locations and identification of almost all the cars in the downtown-ish area of this NATO capital) is just as important as anything held by said security services and labeled as "state secrets".

Which city in Romania is doing that?

Pretty sure it would be a EU GDPR violation to record and store everyone's vehicles and license plates in public spaces without their consent if there's no surveillance warrant.

At least it's like that in Germany.

Bucharest. This is the article about it [1], in Romanian but google translate can help, and especially you can see a photo of one of those cars at the very start of the article.

[1] https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-administratie_locala-26379925-c...

But how's that actually working in practice?

Because last time I checked illegal street parking in Bucharest is still a shitshow where all drivers just park wherever they want because the chance of the police actually fining them is super small.

So is that more for show and fearmongering drivers to not park illegally or do they actually issue and chase down fines now?

You park on a designated place and you have to pay before the AI car comes and catches you, if not, presumably you get a fine. There are still some “manual” check-ups done by people walking on foot and checking your car plates in that grand central system of theirs, those can also give you fines.

As for the parking in Bucharest, things have definitely changed in the last 2-3 years, especially because of technology. The main Town Hall and some of the district Town Halls (we have six) have realized that charging people for parking money is a very handy tax, and because tech has made it a lot easier to put in place and to enforce it’s basically free money for them.

Thanks for the explanation

When you park there you are obtaining a permit (paying with money/app/SMS/abonament) which, quite surprisingly, is tied to your license plate number.

If they implement 'parked, didn't paid' then they are storing the license plate number for some time (at least a day, or a next day).

Anyway, this is a public space and license plate numbers are a public information (just like the names of streets), which can be associated with an individual but until they are - they are not personal information.

>Anyway, this is a public space and license plate numbers are a public information (just like the names of streets), which can be associated with an individual but until they are - they are not personal information.

The fact that the vehicle is in a public space is irrelevant, and the names of streets are an obvious straw man.

Article 4(1) of the GDPR is quite clear as to what constitutes personal data:

> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

The fact that the natural person is identifiable by absolutely anyone (the motor vehicle licensing agency), not just the passers-by looking at the license plates, makes the license plate number personal information.

> The fact that the vehicle is in a public space is irrelevant, and the names of streets are an obvious straw man.

Oh noes, now I can't publish a map with St. StreetName on it! Because Mr. Incognito lives on St. StreetName, 31!

>> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

> The fact that the natural person is identifiable by absolutely anyone (the motor vehicle licensing agency), not just the passers-by looking at the license plates, makes the license plate number personal information. 1

No. Associating Mr. Whatshisname with a license plate number is a personal data. The license plate number itself is not. Otherwise you should go and blur/mask all the streetnames in all the photos made in EU ever. Or disband every motor vehicle licensing agency in every EU country.

And another edit: is [0] a personal data? Should Wikipedia Foundation be punished for even having that data?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BigOriginal.jpg

If only there was a branch of the US military with lots of ships, and bases around the world.

Different ships and bases.

If we're talking about burying ledes, it seems the real story here is that the US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes. That seems vaguely like it should be a security concern in itself; if the US isn't cost-competitive enough to build cranes for US ports, what exactly is going to happen in a war? If the US is seriously worried about fighting China then they're at a real disadvantage because China has all this heavy industry they can repurpose to a war effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZPMC says the same Chinese group are going to be building a new Bay Bridge in San Francisco. And they (ZPMC) don't even have bridge building experience! I'm going with a US v. USSR style defeated-before-the-fight-starts scenario here favouring China.

> US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes

The US doesn’t know how to make cheap, high quality hardware as far as I can tell. Basically every time I’ve recently looked for a piece of somewhat specialized hardware, especially if it’s at least a bit electronic, it’s from China or Taiwan. The cheap sketchy hardware comes from China. The slightly more expensive apparently nice stuff comes from China or Taiwan (but is oddly hard to buy — apparently these companies have not mastered distribution?). The really nice expensive stuff has substantially less informative spec sheets, comes from US-based companies, and is actually a nice package wrapped around almost-stock gear from China or Taiwan.

Even brand new innovative things “from the US” outsource to ODMs in China or Taiwan.

For some reason the US doesn’t seem to have nice contract manufactures or ODM shops and also seems to lack the expertise needed to cost-effectively design or manufacture power electronics.

Since when did not being cost-competitive become a concern for the US military?

At the highest of levels, if two parties are at war the one with the most resources wins. That is obviously a gross oversimplification as millennia of tactics demonstrate, but for the sake of argument just hold the thought for a moment.

If the US supply chain isn't cost effective, then it'll have to commit multiple times the resources of the adversary to win. If the US supply chain becomes inefficient enough, at some point the US becomes unable to win. The US doesn't have multiple times the resources of China when it comes to overall manufacturing, so under that oversimplified model the US just loses any direct war - and apparently their military budgets are similarly sized right now [0], so if China is much more efficient at manufacturing (more than about 2x) they might have an edge even at present spending without being on war footing.

Ok, so now we snap back to reality where there are other factors than just manufacturing efficiency and the US military is presumably in better shape than China's. But you can hopefully see now how without overwhelming manufacturing the US needs to maintain big strategic, organisational and technological advantages over the Chinese military to compete with them. They can't outresource someone with similar resources (for which we have GDP and manufacturing output as proxies) and much more efficient processes.

[0] https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/

Absolutely not, and no.

Value generation in modern "mid-tech" (elevators, cranes, machinery and tools in general) is 50% in services, including software. You would need to make whole new company to develop and service systems for retrofitted Chinese cranes.

Bending metal to crane shape is not that expensive. Delivering full system with automation and maintaining it is.

https://archive.is/20240223070924/https://www.wsj.com/politi...

I wonder if anyone in America knows how to use computers and could just replace the control systems ?

Control systems for induatrial hardware like container cranes?

Who's gonna do this, some add ware developed from Google or Facebook?

/may contain traces of sarcasm

https://archive.ph/Ks2Ss

also: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Man wait until they find out where all my stuff is made.

I watched M3GAN last weekend and I would say electronic toys should be the US congress' next focus.

This doesn't just happen in a vacuum. I wonder what the conversations and actions were that led to this.

I know nothing, but maybe some three letter agencies know more. Or it could just be politics.

Three letter agencies are part of politics. For anything this big it's usually all three: 1/ an industry that can benefit from the policy (US-based crane builders), 2/ the government itself (extra port resilience), 3/ vote getting (union jobs for the company that builds them).

It's not a bad thing by the way that there is broad alignment - although it's not necessarily the most efficient or ideal at the global level.

Don't forget how this sets an example, like for Huawei. Expect Americans to urge their European allies to do the same "because security". This can be another blow in the commercial war between US and China, and a potential benefit for the US if it creates a market for their cranes.

But Europe would just replace cranes that spy for China with cranes that spy for the US... what's the point?

Europe does anything the US tells them to do.

Europe and US are allies so there is less (but certainly not zero) risk from US controlling European cranes than China controlling them. Also, US has more controls that would prevent them from abusing the position as easily (i.e. sure the CIA could disrupt the cranes but the bar would be much higher than the bar for China's three letter agencies to do it).

Those bars apply to non US citizens? :)

There are other constraints like Five Eyes and bright lines around things like how the US would (usually) ask the German intel agencies to spy on Germans if possible. This is unlike the Chinese who probably have limited access to German intel.

Basically this

https://np.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11jsyyf/

Well that is embarrassing.

What's interesting is that some of the conversation in the thread immediately turns political: "what's the big deal, it's made in China lol. They don't want the Republicans to pounce!"

And then 10 years later, boom, national security issue. How are Americans ever going to solve these problems when everything is justified by or excused as political bias?

Is that a secret service agent who's struggling to reposition the US flag over the Chinese name brand?

That's absolutely hilarious that the taxpayers are paying for this.

My ex-commie country would also do this when "the great leader" would tour factories and industries. Workers would cover up all foreign brands and pretend all tech is local and production efficiency is 100x what it actually was.

He pulled up the flag and held onto it instead of trying to reposition it. At first, I also found it funny that it was a secret service agent that went there, but then it made sense: with the flag moving like that (it seems it had a somewhat heavy wooden structure instead of just fabric), there would be a risk of the strings holding it breaking, and then there would be a risk that it could fly and hit whoever was talking later at that empty podium. I believe it's part of their job to avoid these kinds of risks.

Ah yes, the safety concern makes sense.

Pretty silly they tied a heavy wooden frame to it when they could a of just tied a bare flag in 4 points over the Chinese brand without the risk of it falling and injuring someone.

Cheaper to drop something hanging then setup some rigging with a person in it to tie the bottom.

Which, sadly also says something.

That thread from a year ago has a link to the OP issue https://www.timesnownews.com/world/spy-trojan-horse-or-lift-...

Cannot they reverse engineer them just like polish trains geolock?

But that course of action would require the state to be somewhat tech literate and use their big brain.

Why pay a small company a six figure bounty to reverse engineer and patch out the phoning home spyware, when you can pay upwards of eight figures via juicy government contracts to someone like Allen Bradley or Rockwell?

Gotta juice your government contract. Charge a scrappage fee for removing the naughty crane, charge full price for a new crane and a special surcharge for over-night installation... and then have the chutzpah to explain that yes, Chinese and American cranes do look very similar... convergent design something something <cough>.

> invest

Strange way to spell "spend".

Paywall. Link to article?

archive.today works fine.

empty

Very American. Just swipe the card and toss the statement in the bin when it comes in the post later. National debt? What's that?

Just disappear the containers like the stevedores did in the Wire season 2 /s

What about containers? China makes almost all of them.

They’re big steel boxes. Not many remote exploitation attacks on a steel box.

"Free AirTag™ with every container bought from China from here on!" /s

Big steel boxes with enough empty (inner-wall) space for worldwide tracking equipment

Because replacing the cranes means China won't be able to tell where all USA flags are made, lol.

Does it really improve anything? With today's technology, it should be simple put there camera and just monitor containers visually using computer vision +ai.

It's not like they are in hangar. Hell, spacex is monitored 24x7 while building spaceships (ITAR regulated stuff).

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