Exclusive | US senators demand probe into China’s alleged hacking of tech giants’ supply chains
- The senators want closed-door hearings to verify a media report about ‘the potential cybersecurity and supply chain threat’
- The FBI and US Homeland Security are ‘processing the request’
US senators have called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct classified hearings to investigate the alleged Chinese hacking of American tech firms’ supply chains, according to a letter obtained by the South China Morning Post.
An October 4 investigative report by Bloomberg BusinessWeek said dozens of tech companies, including Apple and Amazon, were victims of a hacking campaign by Chinese spies to install chips the size of a grain of rice on motherboards used in the companies’ servers.
Those chips could then be used to give third parties in China access to confidential information, the report said. Apple and Amazon, along with the motherboard maker Supermicro, have vociferously denied the reports and requested a retraction of the story.
In a letter dated October 16, Senators Ron Johnson (a Wisconsin Republican) and Claire McCaskill (a Democrat representing Missouri), who head the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, formally asked US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and FBI Director Christopher Wray to pursue the matter behind closed doors.
Aaren Johnson, Ron Johnson’s deputy press secretary, said on Thursday that the FBI and DHS had received the letter and were processing the request, but that the committee had not yet received a briefing.