The US Commerce Department on Monday will propose a ban on the sale or import of smart vehicles that use specific Chinese or Russian technology because of national security concerns, according to US officials.
A US government investigation that began in February found a range of national security risks from embedded software and hardware from China and Russia in US vehicles, including the possibility of remote sabotage by hacking and the collection of personal data on drivers, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters Sunday in a conference call.
“In extreme situations, 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 (or) blocking roads,” she said.
Can we can smart cars entirely? Every addition in the past five years has been awful
Just wait for subscriptions to become the new normal. GPS for $4, smart services for another $10. They’re basically going down the mobile games standards for enshittification.
My dad got a car in 2011. It has gps. He has to pay a premium to update that, and roads get changed surprisingly often. This is by no means new!
Hell, OnStar has been a thing since 1996. My dad’s 2005 Buick had it.
I had a car from 2012, Ford. Built in GPS. Cost of upgrading? About $200 in Denmark.
Incidentally my car is also from 2011. It has no GPS, so much cheaper for me to use navigation. Less integrated though. Which is of course why they can charge so much for new maps.
Wow my car generates crypto for Ford while I drive that’s just great I really feel the benefit also it tells me that climate change isn’t real so I don’t even feel bad for driving everywhere
No no they’re just starting to put ✨AI✨ in them!
Don’t forget ads in the screens!
I think that you could do all sorts of wonderful things with a car computer.
I just don’t like a number of things that auto manufacturers have actually been doing with them.
And I’d like the car computer to be replaceable and upgradeable and preferably have the life-critical hardware separate from the non-life-critical hardware.
Agreed. I want a thermal camera that detects deer. Instead I get seat warmer subscriptions
This is just the Tiktok ban all over again. The problem is not the Chinese apps/cars spying on you, it’s ALL the apps/cars spying on you. If it’s creepy to have a foreign power with that much access to our data, then it’s creepy for a company to have it too.
Maybe by banning it they’ll create a market demand for cars that don’t spy on you
Yeah, I don’t need hezbollahed from my giant battery toting me around.
Russian? Are there really that many people trying to import Ladas?
My guess is that Russia just got stuffed in there due to the whole invading Ukraine thing getting them generally attached to China on “bad guys” lists, but the thing doesn’t just restrict vehicles where final assembly was done in Russia, but also where components or software came from Russia. And that is probably a more-realistic concern.
In past years:
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One incident had the German navy, including their submarines, using navigation software out of Russia.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/german-sub-navigation-system-russian-controlled/
German media has reported that the Russian controlled ‘Navi-Sailor 4100’ has been installed on at least 100 vessels operated by Germany’s military, including the submarine fleet
I looked at that. Navi-Sailor also links directly to radar (so touches external radios directly), provides remote management and diagnostic and security services. It also deals with military map formats that can store classified information. And, obviously, it’s driving ships. I don’t know precisely how it was installed in Germany’s case, and maybe it was very carefully set up such that that isn’t a concern, but at least for me, that’d be something that I’d be extremely cautious about.
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Another had British submarine work being done using software subcontracted out to companies in Belarus and Russia.
https://kyivindependent.com/telegraph-uk-nuclear-submarine-it-system-belarus/
The Telegraph first reported on Aug. 2 that part of the IT software used by British nuclear submarine engineers had been outsourced to Belarusian developers, one of whom was working from Russia.
The software was supposed to have been developed solely by U.K.-based IT workers with security clearance. The incident took place before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
And those were both dealing with military hardware, where you’d think that the manufacturers would be a lot more careful than with civilian stuff.
I think that stuff like that has maybe started governments taking a closer look at what supply chains look like and what might be vulnerable.
That’s fair. I wasn’t really thinking about how many times you can add “sub” in front of “contractor”. Though it seems like the defense industry should really have a better handle on who’s building their stuff.
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Not just Ladas, SMART Ladas. I didn’t even know they made smart Ladas.
And they could just regulate the tech itself, keep everyone safe, but no, they only block the Bad Countries. Because it’s about money. Nobody calling the shots cares about safety here.
Defcon literally every god damn year: “Here’s how to hack and remotely control a car, which we did it by hijacking the stupid cloud based data collecting service installed on the hardware. Now we can just send whole ass CAN frames and make it do whatever we want”
Feds at defcon: “Yeah but did China make it? Cuz if China made it, only then is it a problem”
They’re punishing russia and china for the zionist terror attack?
Smart move, politicians. \s
