Sponsors (3)
The bill directs targeted grants and pilots to deploy advanced cargo-security technology and strengthen supply-chain protections for participating hubs while improving oversight and evidence for scaling — but it raises privacy and compliance burdens and may increase costs or limit vendor options and leave non‑participating sites less protected in the near term.
Eligible consortia (transportation workers, state and local governments, and private partners): receive federal grant funding for equipment, training, and interoperability, lowering upfront costs to adopt advanced cargo security measures.
Transportation hubs and cargo handlers (workers, shippers, and local communities): get opportunities to test advanced security technologies at up to six pilot sites, which can reduce cargo theft and improve on-the-ground security at participating locations.
Taxpayers and transportation operators: enhanced supply-chain security by prohibiting technologies from designated 'foreign entities of concern,' reducing risk of foreign influence or compromised equipment in critical security systems.
Eligible consortia, taxpayers, and participating hubs: excluding vendors tied to designated foreign entities may shrink the vendor pool, raising procurement costs and risking delays or higher prices for deployments.
Transportation workers, state and local governments, and private partners: consortia may be required to share sensitive operational data with TSA and evaluators, creating privacy and commercial confidentiality risks.
Transportation workers and communities at non‑pilot sites: pilot-based funding concentrates protections at selected locations, leaving other hubs with uneven security levels until (and unless) scalable rollouts occur.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes a TSA-led pilot to fund and test advanced cargo-security technologies at up to six intermodal hubs/rail yards, with grant awards, reporting, and a ban on tech from foreign entities of concern.
Creates a TSA-led pilot program to test and evaluate advanced cargo-security and law-enforcement technologies at intermodal hubs and rail yards. The program will award grants to eligible consortia to buy, deploy, train on, and evaluate technologies at up to six pilot sites (no more than one per State), bar use of technology from a “foreign entity of concern,” require recordkeeping and audits, and deliver agency and GAO reports on results and scaling. Each pilot site ends three years after initial technology deployment there; TSA must report on deployments, effectiveness, costs/benefits, machine-readable data, lessons, and scaling recommendations within two years after first deployment at a site, and GAO must evaluate the overall pilot within one year after all sites end.
Introduced December 4, 2025 by Marsha Blackburn · Last progress December 4, 2025