Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) announced an expansion of technology that will be banned from state-owned devices. The move aims to protect the state and its citizens from Chinese influence.
“Rogue actors across the globe who wish harm on Texans should not be allowed to infiltrate our state’s network and devices,” Abbott said in a statement. “Hostile adversaries harvest user data through AI and other applications and hardware to exploit, manipulate, and violate users and put them at extreme risk.” He explained that the expanded prohibited technologies list will “mitigate that risk and protect the privacy of Texans from the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, and any other hostile foreign actors who may attempt to undermine the safety and security of Texas.”
On January 20, Abbott sent a letter to Texas Department of Public Safety Colonel Freeman Martin, Texas Department of Information Resources Interim Director Tony Sauerhoff, and Texas Cyber Command (TXCC) Chief, Vice Admiral TJ White, declaring that TXCC would be the lead agency in investigating technologies.
Abbott established the Texas Cyber Command in June, declaring at the time that the state was “under constant attack by cyber criminals, attacks that occur thousands of times every single second of every single day.”
Technologies added to the prohibited list include SenseTime, Megvii, CloudWalk, Autel, CATL, Wuhan Geosun LiDAR, Yitu, iFlytek, Uniview, Zhipu (Z.ai), Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), Alibaba, Xiaomi, Gotion High Tech, Baidu, RoboSense LiDAR, TP-Link, Hisense, TCL, Baichuan, StepFun, MiniMax, PDD (Pinduoduo, Temu), Shein, Moonshot AI, and NucTech.
Texas previously banned TikTok from government devices.
