Congressional Restrictions on CRRC Transit Cars?

[John_Perkowski]

Admin Note: This impacts CTA and MTA, at least, so it’s going global for now.

Here’s a lovely little article from National Public Radio. Discuss at your leisure.

Congress Mulls Ban On Chinese Trains and Busses; “Oh, Come On...” Builder Says

[justalurker66]

"Oh, Come On" is a good response.

[electricron]

The US Congress is going to do whatever they wish, and both major parties are seeking votes from labor at manufacturing factories. The Made in America Act requiring 65% American content to qualify for Federal funding should be enough to guarantee a fair competition.

The difference between China, Russia, and other “communist” nations with the rest of the world is who ultimately owns the manufacturing companies; the participating public with private finances or the public at large with government finances. Obviously a difference many American politicians have a difficulty with. What is lost in this discussion are “socialist” nations where governments own a large minority shares of private corporations, for example Volkswagen.

We live in a complicated world, there is no one scenario that covers every possibility. Fairness is subjective, depending upon your point of view. I can see both sides have valid points with this argument. I do not have the solution, so Congress will debate and eventually compromise with a solution nobody likes. Oh well.

[mtuandrew]

I’ve suggested a partnership or licensing agreement with an American company in the past. Right now, that even seems out of reach with the president telling American companies to withdraw from their Chinese trade and supply agreements.

[bostontrainguy]

We finally get a successful highly-capable car builder in the US and now this. This has to be resolved so CRRC can participate in future car orders. We've had too many problems with the existing builders.

[Greg Moore]

My understanding, based on stuff apparently not in this article, is the concerns are multifold, and to be honestly, I'm not sure all are entirely unfounded, if far-stretched.

One of the concerns (and I think overall the US is taking the threat far too lightly in general) is that meta data that can be collected from these cars. My understanding is part of their design includes sending back telemetry to the manufacturer to track possible failures and the like. This is becoming VERY common in all areas of transit. For example, newer Boeing and Airbus planes can detect pending faults ("I've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit. It is going to go 100 percent failure within 72 hours.") and can forward data to the manufacturer and/or airline that can have the replacement part available upon landing. I believe similar data is now available with modern locomotives.

Now, this doesn't sound very nefarious, but, there's real concerns that a bad actor can use such meta data to track usage patterns and start to develop models based on that. This sounds far-fetched, but reportedly newspapers in the DC area have previously monitored pizza deliveries to the WH to track when people were working late and big news items were soon pending.

This is the simple level. There's also growing evidence that more and more electronic devices built in China may have the ability (and in a few cases may actually be doing) sending back data to destinations we're not aware of and this is hard baked into the device.

Yes, I realize this rises to the level of conspiracy theories, but, I've seen enough various stories out there (and know enough about how some of this works) that I think the US would very quickly find itself in a bad place if a full-fledged cyber-war broke out.

(btw, for those who aren't familiar with it, read up on the Stuxnet virus. I recall reading about it BEFORE it was activated and antivirus authors were bewildered by who wrote it and why, since it didn't seem to do anything obvious at first.

We live in a new world.

[STrRedWolf]

The big answer to that is revolves around the control circuitry. Going extreme paranoia here for an exercise, we need to ask a few questions. The big one is: are there any chip fabbers with factories in the US?

Yes. There are. Microchip, Intel, Apple, TowerJazz, Maxim, Micron, GlobalFoundries, IM Flash, NXP Semiconductors, SUNY Poly CNSE, SkyWater Tech, Cypress Semiconductor, ON Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, TSI Semiconductors, GM Components Holdings, Infineon Technologies, Analog Devices, Diodes Inc, Polar Semiconductor, Cree Inc, Renesas, Rigetti Computing, Flir Systems, Rogue Valley Microdevices, Broadcom...

That's just coming out of Wikipedia, and I would think that would cover everything needed for the computer hardware needed to operate a train. Microchip makes microcontrollers for hardware control and monitoring, as does Texas Instruments, Cypress, Micron (memory!), Infineon, and Analog Devices. Intel and Broadcom make the processors (Broadcom makes the chip used in the Raspberry Pi systems). NXP I think does FPGA for custom chips that are field programmable. (And that's just me recognizing the names)

If you're going to build US, why not make sure your supply chain for the critical hardware is all US origin?

[gokeefe]

We finally get a successful highly-capable car builder in the US and now this. This has to be resolved so CRRC can participate in future car orders. We've had too many problems with the existing builders.

"Successful" is a relative term. If CRRC was deliberately underbidding contracts one has to ask why the government in China considered this such a high priority.

Although I'm impressed with what little I've read about their product the fact that they appear to be operating at a state subsidized loss is a major red flag.

Concerns of this nature are unlikely to be fully explicated in public. Worth keeping that in mind if you're hoping for greater detail.

[BandA]

CRRC is majority owned and fully controlled by the government of the People's Republic of China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_China

The legal power of the Communist Party is guaranteed by the PRC Constitution and its position as the supreme political authority in the PRC is realised through its comprehensive control of the state, military, and media.[2] According to a prominent government spokesman:

We will never simply copy the system of Western countries or introduce a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation; although China’s state organs have different responsibilities, they all adhere to the line, principles and policies of the party.[3]

This is definitely a nose-under-the-tent situation. It's unlikely that spy-chips are being installed, rather the goal is to achieve monopoly.


https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/75372188 ... lder-says/Lydia Rivera, a spokeswoman for CRRC-Massachusetts said

"We have no interest in the freight industry. It is not lucrative for us, and we will not be going to the freight industry."

But according to Wikipedia they have a freight-car joint venture! Freight car manufacturers have reason to be alarmed, and NPR and the mainstream media needs to spend more than 5 minutes researching their reports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRRC

In mid-2015, CRRC formed a freight wagon joint venture, Vertex Railcar, as a minority partner with Hong Kong-based private equity firm Majestic Legend Holdings to establish production in Wilmington, North Carolina at a former Terex facility.[23] CRRC provided railcar designs and some components, and Majestic Legend invested US$6 million;[24] the plant was operational by the beginning of 2016.[25] In August 2016, at the request of a letter from 55 US House of Representatives members alleging that Vertex was being unfairly subsidized by the Chinese government, the United States Department of the Treasury began an investigation into whether the Chinese investment in Vertex constituted a national security risk.[26] 42 US Senators sent a similar letter in September, conveying concerns about the state-owned enterprises behind Vertex.[27] The Treasury Department released its report in December and found that the joint ownership was not a risk.[26]

[David Benton]

They are not running at a loss.
Annual report.
https://www.crrcgc.cc/Portals/73/Upload ... 486290.pdf

Unless you mean the USA section , but any manufacturer trying to break into a market would probably run at a loss.

[David Benton]

Its also worth mentioning that total worldwide sales are 1/10th of Mainland China sales.
Economy of scale is massive. Cheap Labor doesn't hurt either.

[mtuandrew]

For a while the story around DC (reinforced by at least one Post story and a few paid canvassers at Capitol South Metro if not elsewhere) was that the proposed WMATA 8000 series cars would literally be listening devices. It’s the sort of thing that sounds really threatening at first, until you realize that anyone having classified discussions in a public place knows they would have their clearance revoked and be terminated, and could be punished under UCMJ if members of the military.

[STrRedWolf]

For a while the story around DC (reinforced by at least one Post story and a few paid canvassers at Capitol South Metro if not elsewhere) was that the proposed WMATA 8000 series cars would literally be listening devices. It’s the sort of thing that sounds really threatening at first, until you realize that anyone having classified discussions in a public place knows they would have their clearance revoked and be terminated, and could be punished under UCMJ if members of the military.

Well DUH, most audio and video is recorded on trains for law enforcement should an incident on a train occur! Don't they say so? I know there's notice on MTA buses, and that's reduced settlement payouts tremendously.

[Arlington]

Require all international mfgs to clone their telemetry to the FBI & NSA. Solved.

[David Benton]

Ah ha. So that's why Amtrak is holding onto the amfleets. If doctor evil comes out of a time capsule now, boy will he be confused. All we need now is the return of the mini skirt. Yeah baby .