Identifying Bad Actors in Our Supply Chains: An ALEC Women’s Leadership Episode

Last month, as part of ALEC’s Women’s Leadership series, Brooklyn Roberts and I spoke with national security expert Dr. Meg Reiss about how states can defend themselves and the nation from People’s Republic of China (PRC) influence, interference, and infiltration. Dr. Reiss served as former US Senator Mitt Romney’s national security policy advisor and is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, as well as a fellow at the National Security Institution at George Mason University. Dr. Reiss is also the founder and CEO of SolidIntel, a company that uses generative AI to derisk supply chains.

One of the lessons from the pandemic was how vulnerable US supply chains were for a wide range of critical items, from semiconductors to active pharmaceutical ingredients. ALEC has model policies to provide possible solutions for both challenges: the Resolution to Prioritize Strengthening the U.S.-Taiwan Partnership to Enhance Global Supply Chain Security and Resilience and the Urging the United States Government to Keep the American People Safe and healthy by Decreasing the Nation’s Dependency on Foreign Manufactured Pharmaceutical Ingredients and Medicine, Particularly from China –

While supply chain security has improved, derisking is incredibly complicated. However, Dr. Reiss emphasized the importance of doing so.

“There are so many reasons to derisk the supply chains!”

Dr. Reiss explained how generative AI helps to identify PRC components in US supply chains, remarking that “when we think about the world of products that are … highly at risk, we think about things that end up in critical infrastructure. This should be front and center in the thought process of folks in state legislatures … across the country.”

Recognizing that critical infrastructure carries greater public threat potential requiring heightened protections from America’s adversaries, ALEC members adopted the model State Infrastructure Protection Act.

Dr. Reiss noted that collaboration with like-minded nations leads to the best policy outcomes.

“We actually took a lot of our models on Confucius Institutes and Huawei not from our own internal experience, but we actually worked with our Australian friends who were at the forefront of pushing back against some of these things even a couple of years before we knew it was a problem.”

Dr. Reiss intuitively understands that the states have a crucial role to play, offering that “the states are in such a strong position to actually be at the forefront of national security when it comes to a lot of these issues.”

ALEC state lawmaker members are acutely aware that the states are often America’s first line of defense and have adopted with several states passing legislation to ban procurement of PRC-manufactured technology – the ALEC model An Act to Prohibit State Contracts with Chinese Government-Owned or Affiliated Technology Manufacturers is meant to accomplish the same goal.

Brooklyn and I are deeply appreciative of all the lady leaders who take the time to chat with us and invite women who have insights that they would like to share with our members to contact us. In the meantime, the video with Dr. Meg Reiss can be viewed here.