r/politics • u/tetaniclemur • 5d ago

No Paywall Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares a National Emergency to Secure America’s Bulk-Power System

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/08/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-a-national-emergency-to-secure-americas-bulk-power-system/
14.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

47

u/elihu 5d ago

It's kind of vague, but basically it seems Trump issued an executive order blocking certain equipment/software used in high-power electrical systems from being imported into the US due to the risk of backdoors or sabatage.

It isn't clear what specific products are being blocked and who the suppliers are. Like, is there actually a real security risk and this is a sensible move, or is Trump blocking the import of high power transformers from some US ally because their president said something that hurt his feelings? Or is this a shakedown (sales blocked until the affected parties book a bunch of rooms in his hotels or buy a bunch of Trump-affiliated cryptocurrency)?

4

u/New-Anybody-6206 5d ago edited 5d ago

The problem is almost everything has a risk of backdoors or sabotage.

They've already banned a ton of Chinese things for a multitude of reasons, but in particular for backdoors, things like CPUs, drones, cameras, routers etc. seem to be of particular concern... but how much of that has actually happened enough to warrant banning the entire company, I don't really know.

Some people think they're being too overzealous in this and others don't.

Funny how no Israeli stuff is banned though, and we know those guys are great at spying and hiding shit. The world's foremost expert on airgap attacks is from a top Israeli university and almost certainly cooperates with Mossad.

1

u/Sknowles12 5d ago

And i was concerned about Siri listening to me.