The US will invest billions of dollars to replace Chinese cranes in US ports for safety reasons, reports the The Wall Street Journal. 

In total, president Joe Biden plans to invest more than USD 20bn to replace the Chinese cranes. 

Instead, a US subsidiary of Mitsui, a Japanese company, will produce new cranes. 

”These cranes, because they are essentially moving the large-scale containers in and out of port, if they were encrypted in a criminal attack, or rented or operated by an adversary, that could have real impact on our economy’s movement of goods and our military’s movement of goods through ports,” says Anne Neuberger, US deputy national security Advisor for cyber and emerging technology.

The replacement of the cranes comes in the wake of a new plan presented by the president to increase cybersecurity across US ports. 

However, the news is tinged with ”paranoia,” says Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington. 

The decision comes after a recent revelation in The Wall Street Journal, which showed that cranes at some ports used by the US military have been flagged as surveillance threats. 

This prompted several officials to express concern that the software on the cranes could be manipulated by China to impede US shipping. Additionally, the Chinese could disrupt the crane’s operation.

Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Kristoffer Grønbæk