Rubio to President: Protect U.S. Olympic Athletes from Chinese Cybersecurity Threats

Press Release

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to President Joe Biden inquiring what steps his administration has taken to ensure that all U.S. Olympic athletes are "sufficiently protected from Beijing's surveillance and manipulation." Specifically, Rubio raised concerns over the Chinese Communist Party's recent deployment of the "digital yuan," a digital currency aimed at challenging the U.S. dollar's status as the global reserve currency and which poses risks to American users' cybersecurity.

"Beijing is pressuring American vendors such as Visa, Nike, and McDonald's to accept digital yuan as payment ahead of the Winter Olympics, and the CCP is widely expected to roll out the currency more broadly to visitors at the Games," Rubio said. "The threat this poses to Americans, who may be similarly coerced into downloading harmful, foreign software in order to process the currency and engage in financial transactions while in China, is enormous."

Rubio is Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

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