[23127] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my Monday national radio report on the
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Wed Feb 11 11:01:59 2026
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2026 07:52:41 -0800
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
Message-ID: <20260211155241.GA4294@vortex.com>
Content-Disposition: inline
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"
Errors-To: privacy-bounces+privacy-forum=mit.edu@vortex.com
This is the script of my national radio report last Monday on U.S.
automakers rushing to meet federal regulations to remove Chinese
software and hardware from their vehicles, and the similarity to the
insane ban against Chinese drones. As always, there may have been
minor variations from this script as I presented this report live on
air.
- - -
So, you may recall the times I've talked about how the U.S., alone
among Western nations, has now effectively banned new drones from
Chinese manufacturers, with China's DJI having by far the largest
market share of drone sales in the U.S., and how this negatively
impacts law enforcement, search and rescue, farmers, utilities,
construction -- a very long list of affected persons and
organizations.
This bipartisan action has been attempted to be justified by
politicians as a security measure against ostensible security risks of
Chinese drones (as opposed to most of the other Chinese electronics we
use). This is even though such security dangers have never been
demonstrated by the U.S. government and so apparently are totally not
based in an actual current reality -- just political paranoia. And as
I mentioned, none of our allies seem to have similar concerns about
Chinese-made drones, leaving the U.S. alone in this ban. This has led
many observers to suspect this is really about economic protectionism
not security.
Be all this as it may, there's something similar going on that could
have much wider impact than the drone ban -- but it does have echoes
of the drone ban. U.S automakers are rushing to try meet a deadline
next month -- March 17th -- to get most Chinese software and firmware
out of their vehicles. A few years from now that ban extends to
Chinese-made auto hardware as well. And this is a complicated MESS
because in the auto industry there are so many layers of manufacturers
and suppliers that even figuring out where some particular piece of
software or hardware originated can be very daunting.
There's considerable irony in this ban since a Chinese electric
vehicle manufacturer, BYD, has just very recently become the world's
largest EV manufacturer, exporting both standard EVs and plug-in
hybrid EVs. They also have relatively low prices. Now you might wonder
why you don't normally see them in the U.S. That's because there's
typically a 100% tariff on them here making a normally very
competitively priced vehicle rather uncompetitive, The tariff was
enacted during the previous administration and continued by the
current one, much as the broad Chinese software/hardware ban was also
enacted by the previous administration and continued by the current
one.
There are some Chinese EVs getting onto U.S. roads. Just a few days
ago at a Senate hearing, Google's Waymo was accused of bypassing
federal restrictions on Chinese made Internet-connected vehicles for
Waymo's rapidly expanding robotaxi system, the problems with which
I've discussed in the past and no doubt will be discussing more in the
future.
Putting Google and Waymo aside for the moment, one might ask if in the
context of automakers, has the federal government demonstrated
evidence of genuine Chinese security issues, given that they never did
so for drones but banned them anyway. And the answer is -- you guessed
it -- nope, there don't seem to be reported actual announced specific
security issues related to the Chinese hardware or software ban for
cars manufactured by U.S. firms. The ban seem again to be based --
like with Chinese drones --- on hypothetical "what might be in the
future" arguments, not facts on the ground now.
This seems to be in stark contrast to the range of real world privacy
concerns that so many people have about the vast amounts of personal
information and activities being collected from U.S. vehicles by U.S.
car manufacturers -- not the Chinese government -- with many drivers
not even aware of how much data U.S. firms are gathering from their
vehicles. That's happening right now -- it's not theoretical and has
nothing to do with China.
Before pointing at other countries, it might be wise for the U.S.
government to help prevent privacy problems related to actions being
taken by those U.S. auto firms themselves. The current situation may
serve the politicians, but it's hurting consumers, not helping them.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Justice For Victims of ICE/CBP
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
_______________________________________________
privacy mailing list
https://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy
