They say it's a security concern. They're right:
Now, the US Commerce Department is set to enact a de facto ban on most Chinese vehicles, by prohibiting Chinese connected car software and hardware from operating on US roads, according to Reuters.
The rationale? National security concerns. "When foreign adversaries build software to make a vehicle [connected], that means it can be used for surveillance, can be remotely controlled, which threatens the privacy and safety of Americans on the road," said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
"In an extreme situation, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States all at the same time, causing crashes, blocking roads," said Secretary Raimondo, a scenario we saw depicted in Fate of the Furious (where it caused me a headache), as well as more recently (and to better effect) in Leave the World Behind.
Yup.
Now I expect there's a whole lot more behind this and the security risks are just nice window dressing, but it's pretty hard to argue with this.
1 comment:
IIRC there was a Clive Cussler book about a Japanese company that made self-driving cars and exported them to America. The manufacturer had some grudge against the US and was going to use his self-driving cars to position nuclear bombs at various places around the US without the hassle of involving self-sacrificing human drivers or dupes. I wonder if the import control weenies read that book.
Post a Comment