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Credit to Author: Justin Ling| Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2022 11:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Justin Ling<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now Reading<\/p>\n Starting this week,<\/span> Teslas won\u2019t be welcome<\/a> in the Chinese resort town of Beidaihe. The electric cars are strictly banned on the streets of the coastal city for the next two months, as senior Communist leadership descends on the city for a secret conclave.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time, either. The city of Chengdu barred Teslas in advance of a June visit from President Xi Jinping, Reuters reported, while some military sites have similarly forbade<\/a> Elon Musk\u2019s flagship product. While no official reason was released, the bans seem to be out of concern that the vehicles\u2019 impressive array of sensors and cameras may offer a line of sight into meetings of Beijing\u2019s senior leadership.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a curious move. China is, increasingly, one of the most connected countries in the world\u2014Chinese industry has even tried to brand Chengdu as the \u201c5G Joy City,\u201d where locals are encouraged to stream their daily lives.<\/p>\n Tesla may be one of the most popular electric vehicle brands in China, with upwards of a half-million vehicles<\/a> on the roads, but it is not itself Chinese. The firm has acquiesced to Beijing\u2019s data localization demands, setting up a dedicated data center in China, but it cannot shake the characterization that it is a foreign company\u2014and, therefore, a national security threat.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a concern unique to Xi\u2019s government. As Chinese automakers gear up for a big push into the West, anxieties are already mounting as to how those vehicles could phone their robust trove of data home.<\/p>\n The future of transport is certain to be electric and autonomous vehicles. They could also be the future of espionage.<\/p>\n National anxiety about<\/span> the surveillance powers of new modes of transportation is hardly novel.<\/p>\n In 1913, the French army seized the German-made Z-4 airship after it flew off course in thick fog and landed on French soil. Paris ordered that \u201cany photographs of French fortified places taken en route would also be seized,\u201d The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> reported at the time.<\/p>\n Through the Cold War, both sides of the Iron Curtain addressed the question of expanding aerial surveillance capabilities by signing the Open Skies Treaty\u2014opting to provide clear rules on how and when both NATO and Warsaw Pact countries would spy on each other from the skies, even regulating the flight path for these surveillance missions, instead of attempting to stop them outright.<\/p>\n Consumer vehicles are just a recent addition to the national security equation. But thanks to the globalized economy and modern product development, they are perhaps the trickiest challenge yet.<\/p>\n As it stands, Teslas are arguably the most connected and widespread of a new generation of vehicles. Not only do they hoover up a massive amount of data on the driver\u2014from call logs to on-board browser history to average speed and route history\u2014but their outward-facing sensors and cameras can relay a considerable amount of information about the surrounding world.<\/p>\n David Colombo, a 19-year-old German programmer, proved earlier this year that accessing incredibly sensitive data on Tesla users wasn\u2019t just possible\u2014it was fairly easy. Using a third-party application with access to Tesla\u2019s API, Colombo got into the systems of more than two dozen Teslas around the world, controlling their locks, windows, and sound systems and downloading a huge bundle of information.<\/p>\n \u201cI was able to see a large amount of data. Including where the Tesla has been, where it charged, current location, where it usually parks, when it was driving, the speed of the trips, the navigation requests, history of software updates, even a history of weather around the Tesla and just so much more,\u201d Colombo wrote in a Medium post<\/a> published in January that detailed his exploits.<\/p>\n While the specific vulnerabilities Colombo took advantage of have been patched, his hack demonstrates a huge flaw at the core of these smart vehicles: Sharing data is not a bug; it\u2019s a feature.<\/p>\n The amount of data Tesla collects and uses is just the tip of the iceberg. We have yet to see fully autonomous vehicles or the much-vaunted \u201csmart cities,\u201d which could see 5G-enabled roads and traffic lights.<\/p>\n In the near future, cars will not only collect information about their driver and passengers, but the vehicles, pedestrians, and city around them. Some of that data will be necessary for the car to function properly\u2014to reduce collisions, better plan routes, and improve the vehicles themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States and Europe have been asleep at the wheel,\u201d says Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights. The US, Canada, and Europe may continue to be the world leaders in producing traditional vehicles, but that lead won\u2019t hold for long<\/a>. Whether it\u2019s cobalt mining<\/a>, lithium battery innovation<\/a>, 5G-enabled technology, or large data analytics, Le says China has been several steps ahead of its Western competitors.<\/p>\n \u201cAll those seemingly unrelated things are converging into this smart EV,\u201d Le says.<\/p>\n Of course, not all of Beijing\u2019s success came honestly. Chinese nationals have been accused of pilfering<\/a> intellectual property from American companies to bolster China\u2019s growing industry. Le says that sort of espionage certainly helps, but it\u2019s not the main reason for Beijing\u2019s exploding growth in the automotive sector.<\/p>\n China\u2019s capability in handling eye-watering volumes of data, for example, is well-documented. Beijing\u2019s facial recognition programs rely on a ubiquitous network of surveillance cameras, its proprietary GPS system enables real-time tracking<\/a> of the Muslim minority in Xinjiang, its expansive online surveillance system feeds into its dystopian social credit score<\/a>. \u201cOne country is used to managing terabytes of data on a daily basis,\u201d Le says\u2014and, at least when it comes to the auto industry, it\u2019s not the United States.<\/p>\n And that data isn\u2019t just Chinese. Massive investments from Beijing are bringing its brand of \u201csmart city\u201d to Bishkek<\/a>, Kyrgyzstan; Venezuela<\/a>; and countries across Africa<\/a>. Chinese autonomous vehicle pilot projects like Pony.ai are even on the roads in California<\/a>.<\/p>\n China has learned that diverse data, taking into account a wide difference in weather, people, and technology, improves algorithms. If China gets better at exploiting that data, it could need less of it. So even anonymized, general data being relayed from a fleet of Chinese-made cars in North America could reveal individual patterns and habits but also paint a complex picture of an entire neighborhood or city\u2014be it the daily routine of an urban military base or the schedule of a powerful cabinet minister. In banning Teslas from certain areas, China is seemingly already controlling for that threat domestically.<\/p>\n Colombo\u2019s white-hat hacking exposes how targeting just one car could lead to a security nightmare. \u201cWhat if a threat actor such as an international terrorist organization gains the capability to hack the vehicles in a government motorcade?\u201d Colombo wrote on Medium.<\/p>\n It has already happened. The German government believes Russia was behind a 2020 hack of its military transportation authority<\/a>, which manages logistics for various government officials. The amount of information available from such hacks is only going to grow. \u201cThe worst-case scenario?\u201d Le says. \u201cThe electric vehicle becomes a missile.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s perhaps China\u2019s<\/span> clear focus on the automotive industry\u2019s future that has led it to clamp down now.<\/p>\n While banning Tesla from cities near high-level government meetings is likely done on an ad hoc basis, Beijing has adopted stringent requirements for companies looking to operate in China.<\/p>\n Rules published in 2021 essentially prohibit automotive companies from transmitting data from outside China\u2019s borders<\/a>, particularly video and geolocation data. The regulations require that a company report to the Chinese government what type of data it collects on its drivers.<\/p>\n While keeping that data in China significantly heightens the likelihood that it could be used by state security services, Tesla quickly acquiesced to the new rules last year, opening a dedicated data center<\/a> on mainland China to satisfy the regulations.<\/p>\n In the past, Beijing\u2019s restrictions in the automotive sector have been more about protectionism than national security. Until 2021, foreign automakers had to find a Chinese partner in order to open shop in the country\u2014axing such a requirement<\/a> is a sign that Beijing is bullish about the future of its own industry.<\/p>\n The West, meanwhile, has been sluggish in adopting local data and privacy protections.<\/p>\n As it stands, Le says, Chinese electric vehicles are roughly three years away from hitting American streets in a major way. \u201cThey\u2019re already in our backyard, and we haven\u2019t done anything yet,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just about regulating Chinese vehicles once they arrive, either. As Colombo\u2019s hack showed, domestic vehicle manufacturers need to step up their security game as well. Many manufacturers push software and firmware updates for various aspects of their vehicles over the air.<\/p>\n \u201cThink about the danger when an update is sent to hundreds of thousands of cars wirelessly,\u201d wrote Alexander Poizner, CEO of UK-based cybersecurity firm Parabellyx, in a 2021 blog post.<\/a> He posed a hypothetical: \u201cWhat if China used malware to disrupt traffic in Taiwan as a prelude to a military attack?\u201d<\/p>\n Insufficient regulation has led to a total lack of consistency, as Poizner noted: \u201cThere is no single standard around cybersecurity for either autonomous vehicles or the infrastructure to support these across the automotive industry.\u201d But cybersecurity standards aren\u2019t the only area where the US is coming up short.<\/p>\n \u201cPolicymakers are struggling at the highest level,\u201d says Marjory Blumenthal, senior fellow and the director of the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a global think tank based in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Washington\u2019s instincts may be quite similar to Beijing\u2019s. In the past, the United States and its allies have opted to simply ban Chinese products from sensitive areas\u2014from the country\u2019s unsuccessful TikTok ban<\/a> to its considerably more effective effort to exclude Huawei technology<\/a> from 5G infrastructure. America\u2019s allies have followed suit in blocking Huawei from the backbone of their next-generation mobile systems, including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n In 2018, the Trump administration moved to slap tariffs on the Chinese automotive sector, arguing that the foreign competition threatened to undermine America\u2019s domestic industry, thus harming a research-and-development pipeline into the US military. \u201cIt is imperative that related R&D remain within the United States, be conducted by American-owned firms, and that the United States Government take measures to secure the long-term viability of domestic R&D in the automotive sector,\u201d reads a 2019 Commerce Department report. (The tariffs were later abandoned.)<\/p>\n Such a protectionist move would likely kneecap major Western automakers, which are currently vying for new market share in China. Beijing has made it clear that any protectionism in the West would be met with retaliatory measures.<\/p>\n There are certainly concerns that curtailing how vehicle data can be collected, analyzed, and transferred could limit research and development of automotive companies looking to keep up with their Chinese competitors, Blumenthal says. Canada and the European Union do have more expansive and consistent privacy laws that offer a clearer road map for companies headquartered there, unlike the United States. \u201cThe data questions are less well explored in this country, given that we don\u2019t have a monolithic privacy regime,\u201d Blumenthal adds.<\/p>\n As companies hustle to build out these new systems, Blumenthal says, they will be collecting a huge volume of information. \u201cThat then raises the question of how much is stored? Where is it stored? For how long is it stored?\u201d she says. Governments need to regulate these areas, she adds, and worry less about China\u2019s panopticon model.<\/p>\n There may be grand claims about what China hopes to do with its unparalleled heap of data, but Blumenthal says she\u2019s not convinced that China\u2019s system will be better simply because it captures more data. \u201cI\u2019m not ready to buy that.\u201d<\/p>\n As the technology matures, she says, companies may figure out how to reduce the noise in that data, collecting only what is necessary to improve safety, make routes more efficient, and inform innovation.<\/p>\n Creativity in determining how those algorithms work may ultimately mean more than the data feeding into it, she says.<\/p>\n Le says there\u2019s a desperate need for clarity\u2014rules about what data can be freely exploited, what data needs to be anonymized, and what needs to be held within a country\u2019s borders. \u201cWe\u2019re over-relying on the tech industry to say, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ll keep it safe for you,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe might look back in 10 years and see it\u2019s the frog-boiling scenario,\u201d Blumenthal says of the auto industry\u2019s increasingly sophisticated data collection. Or, she adds, \u201cwe\u2019ll have a scenario where people are adapting to all the behavioral monitoring in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a note of optimism. While legislative fixes to address vehicle data collection have wallowed in Congress, Blumenthal points to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration\u2019s efforts to modernize its policies to keep up with the times. \u201cAs they do that, it might be reasonable to assume that they could add privacy there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n