PPSA Applauds U.S. Ban on Chinese Software in Connected Cars

The Emerging “Silicon Curtain”

​We’ve long warned that our cars are deceptive. They feel like they offer us private spaces. Yet when we get behind the wheel, we are actually settling inside a comprehensive recording and tracking device. The surveillance modern car is connected to the larger world by Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, satellites and cell service, all fed by a web of sensors that surround us.
 
As a result, our cars can log where we go, record what we listen to, the calls we make, and even how much our weight fluctuates over time. If cameras and microphones are installed in our cars to check for inebriation, as some propose, the car will fully surpass even the smartphone as an all-round surveillance device.
 
It is for this reason that PPSA applauds the Biden administration and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for issuing a ban on Chinese-developed software from internet-connected cars, trucks, and buses sold in the United States.
 
The Biden administration – in an action sure to be upheld by either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump – is taking a rational step in response to the discovery of Volt Typhoon. This is an organization of Chinese hackers who enacted a covert campaign to embed malicious code throughout U.S. infrastructure. With a few keystrokes, China had installed the means to contaminate U.S. drinking water, cut off oil and gas pipelines, turn off our electricity, close hospitals, and halt rail and civilian aviation.
 
The administration was wise to include Russia in the ban. It also reserves the right to extend the ban to other countries with regimes that express malevolent intentions toward the United States.
 
“This is not about trade or economic advantage,” Secretary Raimondo said. “This is strictly a national security action.” The Commerce Secretary told reporters that connected vehicles could spy on drivers’ movements, where their children go to school, shut down to create traffic jams, or even crash to kill their occupants. The risks of both surveillance and mayhem are too dire for any responsible leader to ignore.
 
China Daily warns the United States of the dangers to global trade if we fail to “shed China paranoia.” But we cannot forget the words of Catch-22 author Joseph Heller: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Before last week it might have seemed paranoid to the leaders of Hezbollah that their pagers and walkie-talkies could assassinate them. Suddenly, cars being remotely instructed to drive head-on into each other doesn’t sound so far-fetched. It certainly isn’t paranoid.
 
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, in a thoughtful piece in The Wall Street Journal, looks to the larger threat environment, from Chinese surveillance embedded in cranes in ports, to systems that control cargo ships in Europe. Gallagher writes: “Anyone with control over a portion of the technology stack such as semiconductors, cellular modules, or hardware devices, can use it to snoop, incapacitate, or kill.” Gallagher calls for the development of an “interoperable free-world technological industrial base” that would “make the free-world’s technology stack more attractive than the totalitarian alternative, drawing more countries to our side of the emerging Silicon Curtain.”
 
The bifurcation of global trade in technology by a Silicon Curtain is a somber new reality. The results will include endless hassle, higher costs, and reduced innovation. The alternative is worse – knowing that any day you could get inside your car only to find out it is taking you somewhere you don’t want to go.