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Embedded risks: Securing America’s infrastructure from foreign-controlled LiDAR

Photo Credit: Getty Images


This OpEd was originally published in S.C. Media:

July 14, 2025

Author:  Cory Simpson, CEO, ICIT


Across the country, America's infrastructure is evolving into a network of intelligent systems. It's improving performance and strengthening how we safeguard people, support communities, and boost national resilience.


LiDAR — Light Detection and Ranging — is a key technology driving this transformation. LiDAR sensors enable machines to perceive and react to their environments instantly. Whether by guiding autonomous vehicles or managing traffic and logistics, LiDAR provides accuracy, speed, and coordination across systems that serve the American public.


The technologies we incorporate into our critical infrastructure influence how it performs, who controls it, and how effectively it serves the public. When systems like LiDAR are sourced through trusted suppliers and integrated with strategic planning, they enhance both our capabilities and our confidence in the platforms we rely on. Every component represents a decision about values, alignment, and long-term control.


Congress is beginning to lead with clarity on the issue of infrastructure security. In 2024 in the 118th Congress, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., introduced the Securing Infrastructure from Adversaries Act (H.R. 9565), a bill aimed at ensuring that technologies embedded in American infrastructure come from trusted and aligned suppliers.


Johnson's recent op-ed in The Washington Times, "China's Iron Grip on American Supply Chains," published last month, reinforced the urgency of securing our systems from foreign influence and called for deliberate, security-driven choices in how we modernize our infrastructure.


His leadership reflects what public service should deliver: a clear-eyed understanding of the challenge and a commitment to advancing real solutions through thoughtful legislation.


The 119th Congress now has the chance to move that work forward by passing laws that protect the critical systems Americans depend on. These are intentional choices with lasting impact because the infrastructure that connects and supports us must be built to serve, safeguard, and endure.


Why LiDAR is strategic


LiDAR is a foundational technology in modern infrastructure. These sensors emit pulses of light to generate precise, real-time 3D maps of the surrounding environment. That capability allows machines to navigate, respond, and make rapid decisions with exceptional accuracy and spatial awareness.


Across America, LiDAR already enables:


• Navigation in autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles

• Smart traffic flow and congestion management

• Monitoring across airport, rail, and maritime systems

• Real-time coordination in emergency response and public safety


These use cases reflect LiDAR's role as embedded infrastructure, supporting how Americans move, communicate, and stay safe. Its integration advances public safety, service continuity, and national resilience.


As with any critical component, how LiDAR systems are built and where they come from shape the integrity of the whole. Systems sourced from trusted suppliers reinforce alignment, control, and long-term assurance in the infrastructure that serves the American public.


The strategic stakes of foreign-controlled infrastructure


Strategic competitors are expanding their influence by embedding themselves into the technologies that power everyday life. Through supply chains, standards-setting, and direct investment in critical sectors, nations like China are shaping the global flow of infrastructure and positioning themselves to control it.


This leverage is already present in the systems Americans depend on. Chinese firms manufacture and supply optical components, sensors, and semiconductors that operate inside U.S. roads, vehicles, and communications networks. These technologies are integrated, active, and essential to how the country moves, connects, and responds.


At the state and local level, public agencies are leading modernization efforts but often lack the tools to assess the full chain of custody for the systems they adopt. Without visibility into component origin and supplier alignment, even well-intentioned innovation can introduce persistent strategic exposure.


Representative Johnson has been clear on this point: Infrastructure must be treated as national-security terrain. The sensors, platforms, and digital systems embedded in our highways, ports, and city grids are no less consequential than the hardware protecting our military communities. Trust, control, and strategic alignment must be built into every layer, from procurement to deployment.


When we understand sourcing as a national-security decision, we lead with intention — and ensure that the systems shaping our infrastructure also serve our national interest.


Building with strategic intent


We have the tools — and the responsibility — to act with purpose. Infrastructure technologies like LiDAR must be treated as strategic assets. That shift in mindset should guide procurement, policy, and investment decisions at every level of government.


Public-sector leaders can take these immediate steps:


  • Prioritize secure-by-design systems in all infrastructure procurement

  • Require complete transparency into vendor ownership, supply-chain origin, and component sourcing

  • Invest in American and allied manufacturing capacity to expand access to trusted technologies

Representative Johnson's legislation provides a strong foundation. It connects national security to economic policy and lays out a framework for reducing strategic exposure through intentional sourcing. The 119th Congress can build on that leadership by advancing laws that secure the systems Americans depend on across transportation, logistics, communications, and public services.


In national security, we evaluate every system through the lens of trust, control, and consequence. We ask: Who built it? Who maintains it? And who benefits if it succeeds — or if it fails?


These same questions must guide infrastructure decisions. When we lead with clarity and choose alignment at every layer, we strengthen resilience from the ground up.


Trusted systems, strong nation


LiDAR and similar technologies are reshaping how America moves, connects, and responds. Infrastructure today is more than concrete and steel — it is software, sensors, and embedded systems that define how we deliver services, protect communities, and defend national interests.


Every procurement decision is a strategic act. Every platform we integrate reflects the principles we uphold. And every component we embed shapes our future — economically, operationally, and geopolitically. In today's era of strategic competition, infrastructure is no longer neutral ground. It is the terrain where trust determines control, and control shapes the future.


America's strength begins with trusted systems, secure supply chains, and principled leadership. The 119th Congress now has the opportunity to carry forward that leadership by passing legislation that protects our infrastructure from foreign control and ensures that the technologies we rely on serve the American people. Resilience is built through deliberate choices — designed, sourced, and secured with intention.


Cory Simpson is the CEO of Gray Space Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting and advisory firm, and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure (ICIT), a non-profit organization dedicated to the security and resilience of critical infrastructure that provides for people’s foundational needs. He also serves as a Senior Advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0.  The opinions expressed in this article are his own and do not reflect the views of any employer or affiliated organization.


About ICIT

The Institute  for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)3think tank with the mission of modernizing, securing, and making resilient critical infrastructure that provides for people’s foundational needs. ICIT takes no institutional positions on policy matters. Rather than advocate, ICIT is dedicated to being a resource for the organizations and communities that share our mission. By applying a people-centric lens to critical infrastructure research and decision making, our work ensures that modernization and security investments have a lasting, positive impact on society.

Learn more at www.icitech.org/.


ICIT CONTACTS:

 

Parham Eftekhari

Founder and Chairman

 

Cory Simpson

Chief Executive Officer


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