Comment by t-3
5 hours ago
So... did the Chinese company put Romanian SIMs in the busses? Or was it an importer that installed those? Are there fleet management features enabled by that connectivity or are they actually secret?
Also, why would they purchase busses that they thought couldn't be remotely monitored or controlled?! That seems like a very valuable feature for public transport.
The fleet management features that lead to the review are documented and were easily disabled.
To me this smells of rather basic economic/political propaganda to scare people. The collective west is clearly getting orders from high above to apply pressure on China and it may just be that this is part of it, spreading an air of concern and fear to dissuade other people who pay attention to this kind of thing in municipalities to avoid Chinese manufacturers. It's rather basic social engineering that has the ham fist of "intelligence" all over it.
I don't think it's orders as much as vibes. Some people have finely tuned senses for what they should do to be seen as one of the trustworthy ones, the ones that get it, the ones we could use in a more important job. And that trickles down: one of the things you do, is obviously to network with and boost people who look out for the same kind of political trustworthiness.
The ones at the top, assuming they're not asleep/drunk at the wheel/there at all, don't have to do much. The machine operates itself.
> The collective west is clearly getting orders from high above
God?
Good questions!
If the Chinese wanted to hide anything they'd put SIM chips without markings or eSIMs inside, as opposed to marked SIM cards. What they did is probably obtain a good quote on Romanian SIM subscriptions that work across the EEA. This is clearly FUD, but yes, they should have been more careful as to equip half of their fleet with Chinese buses that call home.