The Biden administration wants half of all new cars sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. Meanwhile, the European Union has taken even bolder steps, mandating that all new cars and vans sold after 2035 emit zero emissions. Taken together, that’s good news—for China.

Today, companies with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control nearly half of the global supply of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. While there is certainly merit in decarbonizing the transportation sector, a hasty embrace of EVs would do more than cement the market positions of Beijing’s battery behemoths. It could also expose the United States and European nations to dangerous cyber threats, similar to how Chinese technology giant Huawei’s unchecked expansion paved the way for China to gain access to critical Western telecommunications networks.

In developing the production of advanced batteries to power tomorrow’s high-tech revolution, Chinese central planners have been well ahead of the West. China’s 13th five-year plan, which governed its industrial investments between 2016 and 2020, highlighted how controlling battery and EV supply chains, including critical rare earth minerals, could give Beijing a competitive advantages over the United States and other countries. China’s current five-year plan goes further, linking breakthroughs in these two fields to China’s emergence as a “science and technology powerhouse.”

Two Chinese industry giants, CATL and BYD, now dominate the global EV and battery markets. CATL, frequently linked to Uyghur forced labor, produces one in three EV batteries, and BYD is on track to become the world’s top EV seller. Both companies owe their ascent to massive Chinese subsidies as well as their corporate connections with powerful CCP institutions. These and other linkages serve as structured channels through which the CCP exerts direct and indirect control over each company’s internal governance, operations, and hiring, with serious implications for battery supply chains.

In the case of CATL, its founder and CEO, Zeng Yuqun, spent the last decade serving as a science and technology delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the highest-ranking entity overseeing China’s United Front—a complex web of organizations and individualsworking to deepen the CCP’s control over Chinese industry and civil society. The United Front also directs China’s overseas talent recruitment programs, which, according to the FBI and leakedChinese government directives, facilitate illegal foreign technology transfers and intellectual property theft. Zeng concurrently serves as a vice-chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the country’s largest business association, whose bylaws state that it is “led by” the CCP and responsible for “fully implementing” Chinese President Xi Jinping’s agenda.

CATL’s close CCP connections go beyond mere political affiliations. Consistent with rules issued by China’s Securities Regulatory Commission in 2018 for all publicly listed enterprises, CATL’s articles of association, which govern its operations, explicitly note that “the company shall establish a Communist Party organization [internally] and carry out party activities.” These party cells and the company’s other party-state linkages provide the CCP with almost unfettered access to CATL’s proprietary technologies and strategic market data, potentially giving other Chinese entities a competitive edge and undermining U.S. and European companies’ positions in global markets.

Yet in a move reminiscent of Huawei’s push to dominate the 5G and smartphone sectors, CATL and BYD are already setting their sights on controlling battery-adjacent industries. These include EV charging networks and battery energy storage systems (BESS) for utilities to store power.

Moving into EV charging is a logical step for both companies, but BESS pushes the boundary of their influence. Such systems harness and store energy from various sources and release that power via existing transmission lines during electricity shortages or as a backup during the inevitable lulls in wind and solar power. But there’s a catch: These Chinese batteries must be connected to host nations’ electrical grids, even though they are not presently subject to stringent review or oversight in either the United States or Europe. Nor are U.S. energy firms required to disclose any details on their partnerships with Chinese battery companies.

Owing to these transparency gaps, a full accounting of ongoing and planned Chinese BESS projects in the United States remains elusive; however, several have broken ground in Florida, Virginia, Texas, and Nevada. Alarmingly, CATL batteries were reportedly installed on the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, which is home to a special operations unit tasked with evacuating noncombatants from Taiwan should Beijing invade. CATL has similarly and aggressively marketedBESS in European capitals, with projects already underway in Britain, Hungary, and elsewhere.

Just as with Huawei, the risks posed by Chinese BESS are immediate and undeniable. Research from the British risk management firm Aon reveals that pervasive cybersecurity deficiencies associated with BESS control systems could allow malign actors to trigger wide-scale electrical grid blackouts.

And a 2022 U.S. Department of Energy report made clear that malicious actors are already “positioned well” to hack distributed energy systems, including BESS, in the United States. Suspected Chinese cyberattacks on India’s power grid in 2021 and 2022 highlight the former’s readiness to target critical infrastructure. The Biden administration’s own reported scramble to detect Chinese cyber actors lurking in U.S. infrastructure networks further underscores the threat.