Critical infrastructure threat discourse is a discursive expansion of security.

Western understandings of critical infrastructure (CI) play an intrinsic role in the contemporary China Threat Discourse. Examinations of foundational tenets of CI serve to illustrate how understanding security requires widening the conversation in ways traditional realists argue risk ‘making both scholarship and state policy incoherent’ (Hameiri & Jones, Citation2015, p. 17). Leif C. Jensen states that ‘one must now “speak security” across an ever-widening array of thematic contexts’ (Citation2013, p. 94) and Hansen successfully demonstrates through her ‘case plus study’ in Security as Practice how one can use a poststructural approach to security to widen the conversation without making it boundless. Widening the field allows us to explore discursive relationships, including the ‘complex of critical systems that are vulnerable to catastrophic disruption’ that constitute critical infrastructure (Collier & Lakoff, Citation2015, p. 20). Claudia Aradau notes that ‘“critical infrastructure” is generally considered a new coinage that goes back to US developments in the mid-1990s’ and CI is ‘predominantly about the role of things in society, their functioning as well as their resilience’ (Citation2010, p. 492). It is essential to note that CI refers both to public services as well as private companies (Moteff & Parfomak, Citation2004) because this draws out the fact that audience acceptance of security concerns is necessary in order for governments to have ultimate domain over assets that can, in essence, be private. Although lists of critical infrastructure can differ significantly – for instance, the US currently lists 16 sectors (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, Citation2019), while Australia lists eight (Department of Home Affairs, Citation2018) – two assets are central to any conception of critical infrastructure: energy and telecoms/cyber.

One’s understanding of security inherently impacts how one reads critical infrastructure. Buzan and Waever claim, ‘security is what actors make of it’ which suggests that out of a world of potential threats the ‘security’ label locates and prioritizes specific threat(s) based on a set of criteria (Citation2003, p. 48). This article examines what actors perceive security to be and it eschews notions of objective threats, aiming, instead, to explore how security is represented in dominant American policy discussions. Fundamentally, the US reads security in the negative sense in that value is placed on insulation from insecurity (Gjorv, Citation2012, p. 836). This has become intrinsic to notions of critical infrastructure where security is defined by resilience against potentially catastrophic disruption to complex, large-scale systems (Collier & Lakoff, Citation2015, p. 27). Energy fears stem from discontinuity so that ‘definitions of energy security focus on the continuity of commodity supplies’ (Winzer, Citation2012). This is equally true with telecoms/cyber security wherein ‘anxieties about risk and resilience’ prioritize the maintenance of secure information flows (Herrington & Aldrich, Citation2013, p. 299).

With a focus on resilience, critical infrastructure cannot be disentangled from security, and the way CI has been invoked in the US is predicated on discursive practices that highlight negative security. President Obama stated that, ‘no single issue is as fundamental to our future as energy. America's dependence on oil is one of the most serious threats that our nation has faced’ (Citation2009). By linking the notion of ‘threat’ with that of ‘energy,’ Obama’s claim not only illustrates the relationship between security of supply, oil scarcity, and US perceptions of energy security, but it also, with audience acceptance, legitimizes them as security concerns. Similarly, President Trump directly engaged in cyber securitization stating that ‘cyber threats are ever-evolving and may come from sophisticated adversaries’ (Citation2018a). Trump not only twinned notions of ‘threat’ and ‘cyber’, but he amplified their potential impact by removing any sunset clause through his statement that these threats are ever-evolving. Moreover, taking into account the full context of his wider discourse where China is habitually portrayed as a threat actor, Trump also plays on audience fears by painting China as a ‘sophisticated adversary’ (Citation2018a). While speech-acts, like these, do not securitize energy or cyber issues on their own, they represent important steps within the translational process of securitization as they contribute to a broader narrative.

As security is not an objective condition, the way one reads energy is vital because ‘energy itself has the potential to affect substantially the way actors and theorists think about security in general’ (Ciuta, Citation2010, p. 21). Knowledge of what telecoms and cybersecurity references is also important because it ‘is an integral component of all facets of American life, including our economy and defense’ (Trump, Citation2018b). While such notions and their links to security are critical, they are elusive. Energy security is a notoriously difficult notion to define and there is much disagreement about what it is (Winzer, Citation2012). For its part, telecoms and cybersecurity have ‘[i]n recent years … appeared in a variety of contexts, many of which have little or no relationship to the original meaning of the term’ (Galinec et al., Citation2017, p. 273). However, the US negative security readings of energy security emphasize scarcity and relative-gains with a priority given to the short-term security of supply of non-renewable resources with an emphasis on oil. Such perceptions help to position China, as a growing oil importer, in direct competition with the US. Relative gains and competition underlies conceptions of telecoms and cybersecurity as well, where ‘cybersecurity is … defending assets and compromising the assets of adversaries’ (Galinec et al., Citation2017, p. 273). Reading the discourse surrounding the case studies exposes the US attempts to clearly defend its own assets and compromise those of China. The cases are interesting in that highly visible American strategies to maintain its security by compromising Chinese assets took place ‘below the threshold’ in the realm of politics (Lewis, Citation2018, p. 13). Examinations of CNOOC’s 2005 bid for Unocal and the contemporary blacklisting of Huawei in the US demonstrates how two different constructs of critical infrastructure have been mobilized in very similar ways to reinforce the China threat in America.