How the West faces defeat at the hands of China at the press of a button: Experts warn of potential vulnerabilities imported into defence and healthcare as Beijing's energy 'kill switches' are revealed

Daily Mail​

22-05-2025

The discovery of 'kill switches' in Chinese-made devices used in the West has provoked a flurry of concerned reactions from experts, who now warn potential vulnerabilities could have been imported into crucial sectors.
Sources last week told Reuters that unexplained communications equipment had been found in devices that play a key role in providing energy to the United States.
This equipment, experts said, could allow operators in China to tap into key energy infrastructure in the West and bypass firewalls, change settings or even switch off devices remotely, with 'potentially catastrophic consequences'.
At the flick of a switch, operators half the world away could hold the power to destabilise power grids, damage energy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said.
Adam Pilton, cybersecurity advisor at Heimdal Security and former cybercrime Detective Sergeant with Dorset Police, issued the stark warning that 'Western governments and businesses have built critical infrastructure on tech that we don't control and barely audit'.
'If a kill switch exists in solar hardware, what else have we imported vulnerabilities into? Healthcare? Defence?'
Dean Gefen, CEO of cybersecurity workforce development firm NukuDo, told MailOnline the threat was 'not only tangible' but 'probable in today's climate'.
'This isn't a question of coincidence. It's about long-term strategic positioning. Inserting potential vulnerabilities into exported infrastructure allows for quiet control,' he said.
'Whether the intent was offensive from the outset or simply opportunistic, the outcome is the same: a foreign government now has a potential foothold in our critical systems.'
In light of the discoveries, U.S. energy officials are now reassessing the risk posed by such devices in renewable energy infrastructure, sources told Reuters last week.
People familiar with the matter told the news agency they had found undisclosed communication links inside batteries and power inverters used in American solar farms.
Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.
While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.
Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, a source told Reuters.
They warned that the se provided channels that could allow devices to be interfered with remotely.
This could potentially give China huge leverage over the United States, with experts warning there is effectively 'a built in way to physically destroy the grid'.
The Trump administration has not yet commented on, or confirmed, the claims. Reuters notes that it was unclear how many devices had been found and in what context.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said: 'We oppose the generalisation of the concept of national security, distorting and smearing China's infrastructure achievements.'
But analysts continue to urge Western leaders to reconsider use of such foreign-made devices that could be compromised by malicious actors.
Irina Tsukerman, a national security attorney and analyst, told MailOnline that 'Beijing could remotely interfere with solar inverters across entire grids'.
'The public hears "solar" and thinks sunshine, subsidies, and sustainability. But under the hood, this is a digital landmine embedded into the backbone of Western energy grids—and it's not a question of if it can go off, but when and how loudly,' she added.
'Remote sabotage wouldn't have to be flashy. That's the beauty of it. It could start as routine maintenance issues—minor, localized outages. Maybe a neighborhood flickers. Maybe a solar farm goes mysteriously dark.
'Nothing too dramatic at first. But scale that up, coordinate failures, add in a little plausible deniability, and suddenly you've got grid instability rippling across states or countries.
'Worse, the initial diagnostics would blame system overload or user error. The adversary could sit back, arms crossed, while the West scrambles to fix its own "malfunctioning" infrastructure.
'And while everyone's busy rebooting circuit breakers & blaming weather patterns, the real damage is already done: public confidence shaken, military readiness compromised, and infrastructure resilience exposed as theatre.'
Illustrative image shows major disruption on roads in Madrid after a sudden blackout in Spain last month knocked public transport and traffic lights offline
During a confrontation, she said, Beijing 'wouldn't need to launch missiles'.
'It would only need to issue a quiet, remote command. Maybe through a firmware update, maybe via a cloud management portal, or maybe baked in years ago and waiting for activation.
'Suddenly, thousands of solar inverters across the West either shut down, go haywire, or start sending erratic voltage into the grid.'
Dean Gefen agreed that compromised inverters could be used to destabilise power grids during a confrontation between China and the West.
'Cyberattacks today are not just about stealing data. They're about weaponizing infrastructure. A hostile shutdown during a geopolitical standoff wouldn't just affect energy, it would compromise defense readiness, disrupt water and transport systems, and inflame social unrest.
'If adversaries can achieve that without firing a shot, we're looking at a whole new era of warfare. This is why governments must audit, isolate, and secure any foreign hardware embedded in national infrastructure now, not later.'
Others advised that, in the event of such a conflict, renewable technologies would not be ideal for targeting.
'Electricity systems using renewables are designed to cope with sudden changes in output from renewable plants. However, on a sunny day solar can account for more than 30% of generation,' noted Dan Marks, Research Fellow in Energy Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
'If a high enough proportion of this capacity operated using affected Chinese inverters and they were turned off instantaneously on a very sunny day, this would create serious challenges for grid stability.
'But there is not enough information in the [Reuters] report to suggest that this is technically possible or whether enough inverters might be impacted. The latter seems unlikely.'
He said more information would be needed from the U.S. on what has been found in order for the UK to respond.
'It may be appropriate to carry out similar checks, if these have not already happened.
'Solar panels at secure sites or which serve as emergency back up may need increased scrutiny. More security sensitive panels and other Chinese sourced connected systems could be purchased from alternative suppliers.'
While the likelihood of such a direct confrontation remained 'quite remote, he said, the issue of overreliance on China 'must be addressed now to ensure that alternative suppliers are not outcompeted and that the UK and its allies do not become completely dependent on China'.
A NATO official told Reuters that member states would also need to identify 'strategic dependencies' and 'take steps to reduce them'.
The alliance said China's efforts to control member states' critical infrastructure - including inverters - were intensifying.
German solar developer 1Komma5 told Reuters that it avoids Huawei inverters, from China, altogether because of the brand's associations with security risks.
'Ten years ago, if you switched off the Chinese inverters, it would not have caused a dramatic thing to happen to European grids, but now the critical mass is much larger,' 1Komma5 Chief Executive Philipp Schroeder said.
'China's dominance is becoming a bigger issue because of the growing renewables capacity on Western grids and the increased likelihood of a prolonged and serious confrontation between China and the West,' he said.
Christiaan Beek, Senior Director, Threat Analytics at Rapid7, told MailOnline that, regardless of intent, the claimed discovery of undeclared remote access capabilities 'introduce potential vectors for disruption, manipulation, or even physical damage to critical infrastructure'.
This, he said, underscores the 'urgent' need for 'rigorous' validation of software and hardware, and stronger procurement standards 'to ensure the integrity of energy systems increasingly reliant on globally sourced components'.
Over the first three months of 2025, solar generation was 34% more than was generated during the same months of 2024, thanks to widespread increases in generating capacity in several key regions.
Such growth multiplies the potential impact of device failure or interference. Should something go wrong, or a malicious actor suddenly switch off key components, large swathes of the grid could quickly become compromised.
Users will be tasked with looking at where their energy comes from, down to the individual part, in order to assess potential vulnerabilities and exposure to foreign influence.
But, if the claims are verifiable, the issue goes far beyond inverters on China-made solar panels. Power inverters are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers, raising the question - just how much of modern life hinges upon the flick of a switch?