It seems more than a little strange that we’re supposed to worry about China utilizing the intrusive automotive technologies that are increasingly being mandated, but not the very governments that forced those technologies upon drivers:
Tens of thousands of Chinese cars will be sold in Britain this year. This doesn’t just create an economic bonanza for Beijing, it gives it a geopolitical advantage too. For modern electric cars are computers on wheels. To function properly, they must be constantly connected to the internet, so that they can receive, gather and share data on their performance and surroundings.
This is a recipe for mayhem. Hackers demonstrated years ago how easy it was to remotely disable a single vehicle. With the full weight of a state cyber-warfare agency behind it, such attacks would be far more devastating and widespread.
If this is a recipe for mayhem, doesn’t it make considerably more sense to simply ban the connection of cars to the Internet rather than trying to ban the import of Chinese cars while assuming that the Chinese won’t be able to figure out how to hack the Internet-connected US- and Japanese-made cars?