Pillen continues push for protections against China, other foreign adversaries, at bill signing

LINCOLN — Gov. Jim Pillen celebrated the passage of the latest legislation in his effort to increase protections against U.S. foreign adversaries in a ceremonial bill signing Friday.

Pillen signed Legislative Bill 1096, introduced on his behalf by state Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, which aims to protect the state’s agriculture and economy by criminalizing the illegal import of dangerous pathogens or pests.

Bostar has introduced multiple like-minded bills on the governor’s behalf in recent years. These include LB 644 in 2025, which sought to prohibit access to state tax incentives for businesses in adversarial countries, like China and Iran, and LB 1300 in 2024, which established a state Committee on Pacific Conflict, and prohibited companies from adversarial countries from bidding on or receiving state and local procurement contracts.

“That’s one of the things that’s important about today,” Bostar said. “It’s certainly about the policy we passed this last session, but so much more it’s this total slate of legislation that we have effectively pursued over the last four years.”

Eugene Kowel, an Omaha-based FBI agent, said when he started working for the FBI 21 years ago, there wasn’t much talk about the types of threats addressed in bills like LB 1096. It was more of a “spy versus spy game” at the time, Kowel said. But over the last two decades, he said the threats have evolved as food insecurity has become an increasing issue in China and other countries.

Pillen said Nebraska agriculture plays a prominent role in global food security, making it important for the state to protect its assets. Kowel said the scope of threats have expanded to things like malware embedded in local infrastructure, and it’s reached a point where the FBI can’t respond to it all single-handedly.

“We focus on this threat with laser intensity, but this isn’t something the FBI can just arrest their way out of this problem,” Kowel said. “This requires a whole government approach.”

While the text of LB 1096 doesn’t specifically name China, much of Friday’s event was focused on the Chinese Communist Party. On multiple occasions, Pillen said he believes Americans have been “duped” into buying “junk” from China, and warned that buying anything with a Chinese label could pose a security risk.

Pillen said he didn’t have any specific policies in mind for future legislation in this effort, but he and Bostar confirmed they are still focused on the issue.

“Next time there’s a balloon floating across the country and nobody can identify its source, and it’s over Nebraska space, we’re going to make sure it doesn’t get out of the state. We’ll bring it down,” Pillen said, referring to a Chinese surveillance balloon that was discovered hovering over Montana in 2023.