U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch is sounding the alarm over groups using federal money to buy life-saving personal protective equipment from companies in “adversary” China.
“We’ve got China hacking federal agencies, hacking our military and hacking our domestic companies, we’ve had theft of intellectual property,” the South Boston Democrat said. “We shouldn’t put our future and our safety in the hands of a government that’s been hostile to the interests of the United States.”
Under President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that Lynch and other Massachusetts lawmakers helped pass into law, billions of dollars are flowing to states, municipalities, schools and other businesses to help them buy masks, gloves, gowns and other equipment they might need to help protect people against COVID-19.
“We flooded these cities and towns and states with resources to buy PPE,” Lynch said. “However, many of them we’re seeing have prior relationships with producers in China, and distributors that have relationships in China.”
The U.S. government along with 13 others issued a joint statement on Tuesday expressing “shared concerns” over lack of access to data that plagued the World Health Organization-China study of the origins of the coronavirus. Biden press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the study, which is under review by U.S. experts, “lacks crucial data, information and access; it represents a partial and incomplete picture.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency issued an emergency warning after Microsoft said in a blog post it believed its Exchange email program was targeted by a hacker group “assessed to be state-sponsored and operating out of China.” The FBI last year charged four Chinese military-backed hackers in connection with the 2017 Equifax breach.
“It’s a national security vulnerability that we need to close,” Lynch told the Herald. “If we have to rely on our adversary to protect us, we’re in trouble.”
Massachusetts companies and others across the nation have been pumping out critical PPE for months now.
“We have companies all over the United States that are trying to provide the product for the protection of our United States citizens,” Lynch said in a press conference with the governor and the heads of FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.
“That can’t happen if we continue to buy product from China,” Lynch said. “So we have to get our act together.”
