HR 171 Introduced - Resilient Manufacturing Task Force Act

Last month Rep Haley (D,MI) introduced HR 171, the Resilient Manufacturing Task Force Act of 2021. The bill would require the Secretary of Commerce to establish the Resilient Manufacturing Task Force which would be tasked with identifying “critical vulnerabilities in the supply chains of products and resources that are essential to the economic security of the United States” {§2(c)(2)(A)}.

RMTF

The Resilient Manufacturing Task Force (RMTF) would exist for one year. It would be tasked with identifying and mitigating critical vulnerabilities in the supply chains of products and resources that are essential to the economic security of the United States. To accomplish the mitigation mandate, the RMTF would develop plans for {§2(c)(2)(B)}:

• The formation of a National Manufacturing Guard, which shall be a reserve of industry volunteers who are trained and empowered to, in times of crisis, help manage manufacturing supply chains, logistics infrastructure, and workforce resources.

• The establishment of a Supply Chain Data Exchange, which shall support the National Manufacturing Guard described in clause (i) by providing real-time, centralized information on a national scale regarding, with respect to manufacturing supply chains, inventory, capacity, resources, and supply chain bottlenecks.

• The formation of a Technology Corps to serve as a workforce pipeline that prioritizes manufacturing skills that the Task Force and the National Manufacturing Guard described in clause (i) determine to be essential to the economic security of the United States.

The bill authorizes the appropriation of $5 million for FY 2021 and FY 2022 to carry out the activities outlined in the bill.

Moving Forward

Neither Haley nor her cosponsor {Rep Balderson (R,OH)} are members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that they are unlikely to have the necessary influence to have this bill considered in Committee. The $5 million authorization for this bill is the major stumbling block that would have to be overcome for it to be considered as a standalone measure. Otherwise, I think that this bill could achieve some level of bipartisan support.

This bill has a better chance of proceeding as an amendment to the FY 2022 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies spending bill.

Commentary

Normally this would not be a bill that I would cover in this blog because it does not specifically address chemical safety/security or cybersecurity issues. A small point did get my attention, however, in the ‘Sense of Congress’ listing in §2(b)(2):

“(2) the vulnerabilities [“significant vulnerabilities in the manufacturing sector”] described in paragraph (1) go largely unnoticed until they are revealed by disease outbreaks, cyber attacks [emphasis added], natural disasters, and other emergencies;”

We have not yet had a cyberattack that was capable of shutting down all or even a significant portion of the manufacturing sector. Anyone attempting to go after a specific portion (a particular type of commodity or product for instance) of the ‘manufacturing sector’ would have to contend with the fact that manufacturing facilities are stick-built with control systems that are typically a one-off design that reflects the state-of-the-art at the time of manufacture. Designing an attack that would shut down, or even just significantly slowdown, multiple facilities owned by different organizations would be very difficult (I feel a Future ICS News post coming on…).

While a cyberattack on an industry is unlikely, this bill makes a good point is that we have seen in the last year that there are situations that can arise that would imperil portions of the manufacturing sector. This bill, while unlikely to get enacted into law, should serve as a starting point for a reasoned discussion on the topic. And that discussion should include the unlikely, but not impossible, chance of a directed attack on the manufacturing sector and how that could be rectified.