Chinese electric vehicles could be “weaponized” by Beijing, report warns

10/01/2024 / By Ava Grace

Ministers in the United Kingdom are being advised to consider banning Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers from securing government contracts over national security and data privacy concerns.

Suppliers suspected of having ties to China’s military-industrial complex pose a key risk due to the potential for built-in wireless components in EVs to be “weaponized,” which could even be used to gridlock British streets, according to the report by the China Strategic Risks Institute (CSRI) and the Coalition on Secure Technology.

The so-called Cellular IoT Modules (CIMs) are wireless components embedded in all-electric vehicles and act as a gateway for data to flow in either direction. (Related: Can China remotely control and detonate electric vehicles?)

The report said it was concerned that data generated by Chinese-manufactured EVs operated in the U.K. could end up in the hands of the Chinese state and could be used for surveillance purposes.

This adds to concerns that the British government’s open-door policy to EVs from China threatens to undercut domestic manufacturing. The U.K.’s domestic car industry is responsible for 198,000 manufacturing jobs, representing 2.5 percent of the country’s entire GDP.

CSRI warned that China’s heavy involvement and subsidization of its EV manufacturing sector, allowing the country to produce an excess of five to 10 million EVs per year, along with the British government’s failure to impose restrictions on Chinese EV imports raises the possibility of China posing a threat to British national security and to the country’s car manufacturing industry.

The study comes amid a rapid influx of Chinese automakers into the U.K. market, with the CSRI claiming that Chinese-made EVs have increased their U.K. market share from just two percent in 2019 to 33.4 percent in the first half of 2023.

British government rapidly procuring EVs for the public sector

The U.K. government is rapidly procuring EVs for the public sector. It confirmed last year that some EV units used by the Ministry of Defense had been supplied by MG, a motoring brand owned by Chinese state-owned automobile manufacturing giant SAIC Motor.

Chinese EV giant BYD has also made significant inroads in the British public sector, with at least 1,800 electric buses delivered to local authorities across the country in the past few years.

CSRI warned that London’s refusal to impose restrictions on Chinese EVs, unlike its neighbors in the European Union, could result in Britain becoming a “dumping ground and a potential backdoor into the European market” for Beijing.

The report further warned that Chinese-made CIMs used in EVs could be used to send data back the Beijing about British users. The paper noted that the totalitarian government mandates that all firms within the country provide data access to the state, which was one of the motivating factors for the U.K.’s previous decision to phase out components manufactured by Chinese tech giant Huawei from its 5G networks by 2027.

The CSRI suggested that the U.K. mandate foreign suppliers of EVs to agree to not transmit data overseas under any circumstances, introduce a legal requirement to share their source code with the British government, and allow for regular inspections of data storage centers globally to ensure that sensitive data is not being sent covertly to other servers.

Watch this video warning that new cars, including EVs, could be remote-controlled by governments.

This video is from PureTrauma357 on Brighteon.com.