Will Chinese LIDAR Do for Americans What It Does for the Uyghurs?

An Example of American Techno-Masochism

​PPSA works hard to counter growing government surveillance. This generally means surveillance by U.S. federal agencies – such as FISA’s Section 702 authority passed by Congress for foreign surveillance but used to spy on Americans. We also scrutinize expanding surveillance by state and local police, including cell-site simulators that trick your smartphone into giving up your location and other information, and ubiquitous facial recognition software that can follow you around.
 
But our concerns about government surveillance don’t end with just our government.
 
We are increasingly concerned about the regular and sometimes pervasive surveillance of Americans by the People’s Republic of China, most recently the potential for Beijing to use TikTok as a way to track 80 million Americans.
 
Now, thanks to an investigative piece in The Free Press, we’ve learned that China is also looking to surveil Americans through an increasingly common technology in American cars – LIDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging. This is the system that allows self-driving and semiautonomous cars to track the traffic around them. LIDAR is also, The Free Press reports, “a mapping technology, an aid to the growing number of smart cities, a tool for robotics, farming, meteorology, you name it.”
 
Who is the dominant manufacturer and seller of LIDAR technology in the United States? It is Hesai, a Chinese company that sells nearly one out of every two LIDAR systems globally. In sales, it far outsells all of its American competitors together.
 
China is relying on an old playbook to dominate the U.S. and world markets in LIDAR. The Free Press reports that Hesai does this by offering a solid product, but one backed by Chinese subsidies to sell at below price. Why would they do that?
 
An explanation comes from Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), who fired off a letter earlier this summer to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy. 
 
“[I]t is my understanding that the Chinese LIDAR companies are working with the Chinese Government and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to improve this technology and leverage it for Chinese military applications. Simultaneously, these companies have been flooding the U.S. market with low-cost, heavily subsidized Chinese LIDAR, potentially enabling the Chinese to collect a trove of valuable information …
 
“Moreover, the Chinese Government is using LIDAR sensors to conduct police surveillance in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where evidence suggests China is engaged in ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people.”
 
Given that Chinese law enforces a “military-civil fusion” strategy on Chinese businesses, requiring every Chinese organization and citizen to “support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work,” why on earth would we allow that same government to be able to spy on every American in every near-future car?
 
It is one thing to be forced into the position of the Uyghurs. It is quite something else for the United States to willingly submit to techno-masochism.