In the current political environment, it is difficult to imagine major issues on which Republicans and Democrats can find common ground. Protecting the safety and security of citizens from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is hopefully still that issue.
In recent years, we have seen growing agreement among lawmakers that the CCP is actively working against US security. Whether through coercive trade practices, espionage, military aggression, or technology theft, the CCP is out to undermine American strength.
President Donald Trump has correctly identified our country’s increased dependence on Chinese companies as a clear threat to national security. In response, he has taken action to rebuild our domestic industrial manufacturing bases. This is especially true for critical security sectors such as defense, nuclear development, pharmaceutical manufacturing and data center infrastructure.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during his joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest, Hungary, May 9, 2024. (Szilard Koszticsak/MTI via AP)
The Trump administration should look at medical devices now. This lesser-known threat to American privacy and security lurks in our hospitals, healthcare facilities, and even in the homes of everyday Americans. Medical devices are used to treat patients, monitor patient health, and inform medical decisions made by healthcare professionals. They are crucial tools used in the daily care of our most vulnerable members of society.
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It’s no wonder that medical devices from Chinese companies not only have the potential to take advantage of that intimate access, but have already been shown to exploit these vulnerabilities to gain access to the personal, private data of American patients.
Just this month, it was reported that medical hardware from Shanghai-based United Imaging has been installed in some of the country’s top research labs. In some cases, these labs were even funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Not only does a United Imaging device have it used in a Chinese military hospital, but so does United Imaging worked with the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences. And according to the FBI, so was the company so-called to have bribed employees working in an NIH-funded laboratory to back-channel non-public information about their research. One researcher, a Chinese citizen, pleaded guilty to making false statements in financial disclosure forms to the NIH.
Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about a patient monitor from Chinese company Contec, specifically calling attention to a software backdoor on the device that, once connected to the Internet, “begins to collect patient data, including personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI), and exfiltrates (retrieves) the data outside the healthcare environment.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) followed up on its own report, saying the backdoor allowed remote actors to engage in “remote code execution and device customization, with the ability to change its configuration.”
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Far from an idle threat, CISA explains that this vulnerability in a machine that monitors and displays critical information such as electrocardiograms and blood pressure could lead to life-or-death consequences: “This poses risks to patient safety, as a faulty monitor could lead to incorrect responses to vital signs displayed by the device.”
Medical devices made by Chinese companies have quietly made their way into many hospitals and clinics in the United States, posing hidden risks waiting to be exploited by the CCP.
First, patient privacy is at risk when unknown actors can gain access to the most sensitive and confidential data of every patient in America, undermining the foundation of trust in our healthcare system.
Combined with the fact that Chinese law forces Chinese companies to cooperate and share information with the CCP and that China prizes big data and collects information about individuals around the world, we can rest assured that whatever private information is collected about American patients is not in our national interest.
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Second, we cannot be confident that siphoning off information will not escalate to more serious tactics that endanger patients’ lives. Remote access to medical devices could lead to real harm to patients if these devices were reconfigured to display false information, which would then lead to unnecessary and harmful medical interventions.
Third, the American health care system is becoming too dependent on Chinese companies to run our hospitals. It doesn’t take much to think about what would happen if the CCP decided to stop supplying medical supplies. Like critical minerals, energy, or military equipment, dependence on Chinese companies for medical equipment poses a clear threat to American security.
What these threats amount to is that the US can no longer blindly outsource medical equipment – some of our most vital and sensitive equipment – to companies operating on behalf of hostile foreign governments like the CCP. It is critical that America has a domestic supply chain of medical devices.
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Now is the time for lawmakers, both at the federal and state levels, to take this threat seriously and take meaningful steps to reduce the risks of these medical devices.
Protecting Americans from threats to their health and safety should be an easy, bipartisan victory.
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