On June 7, Texas governor Greg Abbott sat down at a desk in the state capitol and, flanked by a half-dozen lawmakers, put pen to paper for a ceremonial signing of the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act. “As far as I know this is the first law of its kind by any state in the United States of America,” he boasted. The bill’s purpose: Prevent business entities associated with “hostile nations” from accessing the Texas electricity grid and other pieces of “critical infrastructure,” including computer networks and waste treatment systems.
The bill, which became law on June 18, was not just precautionary—it was a direct response to one Chinese billionaire and his plans to build a wind farm in southwest Texas, according to its author, state senator Donna Campbell. Since 2016, a company owned by Xinjiang-based real estate tycoon Sun Guangxin had spent an estimated $110 million buying up land in Texas’ Val Verde County. Located on the Mexico border, Val Verde is home to about 50,000 people, the small town of Del Rio, family-owned hunting ranches—and Laughlin Air Force Base, a training ground for military pilots. In less than two years Sun bought up roughly 140,000 acres in the county through subsidiaries he controls. He set aside 15,000 acres of that land for his company GH America Energy LLC to oversee the construction of a wind farm that could feed into Texas’ electricity grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
