Joshua Steinman (Galvanick) on rogue cellular modules found hidden in Chinese solar inverters threatening the US power grid

Summary

Joshua Steinman (Galvanick) joined to discuss a Reuters report on rogue cellular modules found hidden inside Chinese-made solar inverters — components that sit inside the US electrical grid and were not listed on any bill of materials or RFP documentation.

What was found

When the inverters were physically opened, they contained undeclared subcomponents including cellular chips and circuitry capable of bypassing firewalls. Steinman says the practical implication is that Chinese actors could reach into grid-connected devices remotely and make changes — turning equipment on and off in rapid succession, which is enough to trigger cascading failures in a power grid even without a physical explosion.

The inverters are internet-connected by design, since operators want remote status monitoring. That existing network access makes the covert cellular module harder to isolate — blocking it at the cell tower level would be technically difficult.

Why it wasn't caught earlier

Stemming from what Steinman calls widespread naivety: operators assume equipment works as described. Detecting implanted components requires firmware reverse engineering by specialized firms — expensive, slow, and impractical at grid scale. The alternative is simply not sourcing from Chinese manufacturers, though Steinman acknowledges that Huawei and Sungrow dominate global solar inverter supply.

This isn't entirely new territory. A firm called Finite State previously broke open Huawei telecom equipment and documented similar hidden capabilities that could be exploited by Chinese intelligence services — findings that surfaced between 2018 and 2020 and contributed to the US ban on Huawei telecom gear.

Stemming from that precedent, Steinman argues the current situation is a direct continuation: Huawei and aligned companies, unable to sell telecom hardware in the US, found entry through the energy sector instead.

The policy lever

Stemmann says the legal tool already exists. He wrote Executive Order 13873, known as the ICT supply chain executive order, which allows the US to ban companies from operating domestically once a connection to Chinese intelligence services is established. He describes unnamed opposition as "dark forces" but frames the underlying policy question as bipartisan.

For near-term sourcing, he points to Enphase as an American-made inverter alternative.

The broader pattern

Stemmann frames Germany as a cautionary example: Russian- and Chinese-aligned NGOs spent decades promoting denuclearization and energy dependence, resulting in Germany's reliance on Russian gas via Nord Stream 2 — effectively handing Moscow a kill switch over the German economy. He applies the same logic to Taiwan, which recently decommissioned its last nuclear reactor despite being an energy-importing island nation within a few miles of a hostile actor. Stemmann is blunt that Taiwan's seismic risk concerns are solvable with modern fail-safe reactor designs and describes the decision as a strategic own-goal.

AI infrastructure deals in the Gulf

On the Trump administration's AI agreements with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Stemmann is broadly supportive. He frames it as a direct competition with China's Belt and Road 2.0 — Beijing offering Huawei Ascend chips bundled with DeepSeek and Manus, while the US counter-offer is Nvidia chips with Meta's Llama. He says China has been pursuing these same Gulf deals for at least four years, and endorses the US push with the caveat that appropriate guardrails matter for any advanced technology transfer.