Worries about potential China-Taiwan conflict spur state legislation
State lawmakers push bills to evaluate and mitigate risk of supply chain disruptions and possible Chinese attacks on critical infrastructure.
Fears of possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait are spurring state-level legislation aimed to identify and mitigate the potential local impact of hostilities.
Since the beginning of the year, lawmakers in Arizona, Nebraska and Illinois have introduced versions of the Pacific Conflict Stress Test Act — bills that impose checklists of potential local vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure security if Beijing eventually uses force to “reunify” with Taiwan.
It’s an attempt to address fears that China could pair aggression against Taiwan with acts against the U.S., for example by hacking water systems or the electrical grid.
One of the latest bills was introduced Wednesday in the Arizona House of Representatives. It would obligate Arizona’s government to draft strategies to reduce risks to the state if conflict breaks out in the Pacific. “It also would require Arizona to examine potential cyberattack vulnerabilities in its critical infrastructure as well as the implications for “disruption or complete severing of supply chains between this state, its vendors and other countries in the Pacific.”
“We’re a state that’s uniquely vulnerable to attacks on our critical infrastructure,” said Arizona Rep. Alexander Kolodin — one of six Republican state lawmakers who voted to introduce the bill in the House. “The black swan event of a Chinese attack that takes down the grid for a prolonged period of time can’t really be discounted.”
The Nebraska and Illinois bills mirror the language in the Arizona version. The Nebraska bill will “be advanced out of committee and to the floor sometime early next week,” the office of Democratic Sen. Eliot Bostar said in a statement on Friday. The Illinois bill passed first reading and is now under consideration by the Senate Assignments Committee. The sponsor of the Illinois bill didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Those bills are the brainchild of Michael Lucci, founder of the hawkish nonprofit advocacy group State Armor which is lobbying states to enact laws aimed to insulate them from potentially malign Chinese influence. The organization does not receive corporate funding, Lucci said, and is a bipartisan nonprofit focused on “protecting America and its citizens from Communist China.”
The inspiration for the legislative push was the pandemic-related supply chain disruptions for China-produced items including personal protective equipment and other medical supplies.
“It’s a concept that we originated and … lawmakers say ‘Hey, can you put pen to paper and kind of sketch out what you think that looks like?’” Lucci said. State Armor launched operations in January and its drive to convince state lawmakers to take up anti-Chinese Communist Party legislation is its first lobbying campaign. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on China has praised the group for “acting with a sense of urgency” while former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has commended its “ready-for-action” lobbying plans.
Still, the legislation isn’t always getting traction. The Arizona House bill is a revival of legislation that died on the Arizona Senate floor earlier this month.
Arizona Sen. Frank Carroll — who is listed as a sponsor on both the Senate and House versions of the bill — said his fight isn’t over and noted that if the legislation passes in the House it will come back for consideration in the Senate.
Even the most pessimistic analysts say a cross-Strait conflict with China isn’t imminent. Still, warnings from the Chinese government and from U.S. military officials suggest it’s a real possibility.
Predictions of the economic impact of confrontation across the Strait are dire. A blockade of the self-governing island could cost the global economy “well over two trillion dollars,” the Rhodium Group economic research firm said in December.
And state-level infrastructure could be a target. FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional hearing in January that “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.”
The state initiatives echo moves by legislators in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia to brace their economies for the impact of a possible war over Taiwan. The International Parliamentary Alliance on China, a non-partisan grouping of lawmakers — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — focused on countering China’s threats to democratic countries, launched Operation MIST, an initiative to “measure impact of a shock in the Taiwan Strait” earlier this month.
Politicians realize “they’ve got huge skin in the game when it comes to Taiwan,” said Luke de Pulford, IPAC’s executive director. Lawmakers taking action now to address those risks can avoid voters “waking up to an economic crisis five times worse than that caused by Ukraine that governments haven’t done anything to prevent,” de Pulford said.
A version of this story previously appeared in POLITICO’s China Watcher newsletter. Want more content like this? Subscribe here.