this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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147
Denmark finds ‘suspicious’ components in key infrastructure imports, raising concerns about espionage and energy security (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 day ago by Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to c/europe@feddit.org
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Danish firms have found “suspicious” components added to east Asian circuit boards that were supposed to be built into the country’s green energy infrastructure, according to an industry body.

It has raised concerns about the potential for remote disruption of the power supply or digital espionage, coming a week after the US claimed to have identified “kill switches” in a consignment of solar panels and batteries from China.

[...]

Green Power Denmark, an umbrella group for 1,500 Danish renewable technology companies, said the components from “the East” had been found during routine checks on a “development project” that had at no point been connected to the grid.

“It’s a clear warning: threats to energy security can hide in plain sight,” the organisation said. “The real danger isn’t always sabotage. It can also be unlisted components. Hidden functions. That’s why Danish energy companies dismantle and inspect before anything goes live.”

Jorgen Christensen, Green Power Denmark’s technical director, said there was no proof of foul play and it was possible that the mysterious electronics had been included to add some kind of innocent function to the circuit boards.

“It’s possible the supplier had no malicious intent,” he told Reuters. “We can’t say at this point. But that doesn’t change the fact that these components shouldn’t be there.”

Walburga Hemetsberger, head of the lobby group SolarPower Europe, said the discovery was highly concerning and called for an investigation.

[...]

In recent years experts have issued increasingly strident warnings about the security risk posed by China’s stranglehold over the supply of many categories of renewable energy components in Europe, such as batteries, turbines and the inverters used to smooth the voltage of power as it is fed into the grid.

The large-scale blackout that occurred a fortnight ago across much of Spain and Portugal, both of which depend heavily on Chinese-made solar energy infrastructure, has further concentrated minds on the issue.

[...]

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[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There's no reason to think it's propaganda at this stage. It's most likely due to risk assessments being done after the Iberian outage.

[–] centof@lemm.ee -1 points 1 day ago

That could be but I feel like good propaganda does use other stories and narratives to boost its persuasive power. IF it was due to risk assessments then they should put that in the article. I feel like if they had solid proof, they would be willing to actually share that proof with the public rather than just hearsay that these stories have been.

If there was evidence of it being China, I would think they would be a lot less subtle about it then running articles about sus components without mentioning the connection Iberian incident. Something more direct like 'Iberian outage caused by kill switches in Chinese solar equipment' rather than running separate stories and leaving it to the reader to connect the stories on their own.

That's what makes it suspicious too me, too much fearmongering and too little substance and facts in the articles.

[–] Anonymaus@feddit.org 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I dont believe chinese are the only ones doing this, but only they are getting news coverage over it, so it does seem a bit like they want to divert attention from the wider problem ( btw why did news media stop reporting about f35 kill swich )

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Circuit boards are produced in China, Taiwan and to a much lesser extend there are some productions in countries like Japan, Malaysia, US, India etc. But nearly all are manufactured in China.