Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in an interview that aired Thursday on “Rising” that Americans across the country should be concerned about the cybersecurity threats against Washington, D.C.’s public transit system.
“We have hundreds of millions of visitors come through every decade to the capital city,” Raskin told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball earlier this week.
“It belongs to all of America and the representatives for people from all over the country come here,” he continued.
“We just want to make sure that we don’t wake up one day and realize we’ve made a bad mistake. We’ve got to proceed with absolute caution in terms of who has got access and control over the underground infrastructure and the cyber infrastructure of our region,” he said.
China’s state-owned Railway Rolling Stock Corp’s recent moves to get involved in the U.S. rail industry has worried some lawmakers and D.C. officials about cybersecurity issues.
The Chinese company has produced rail cars for transit systems in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.
Raskin is one of several D.C. metro-area lawmakers who requested that the House Appropriations Committee issue grants to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority only if Metro does not award contracts to state-owned corporations.
The Washington Post reported last month that some experts have warned that China could use transit rail cars to carry out cyber espionage, though the newspaper said the company called that “ludicrous.”
— Julia Manchester
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