Comment by jacquesm
10 hours ago
I don't mind paying more for a European product, and as for the 'poor long term reliability': we don't know what the long term reliability of Chinese vehicles is yet.
Not that it really matters, my car is 27 years old this year and I won't be getting another one but that has to do with wanting a car that is doing what I want it to do rather than what it wants to do.
I don't know if this is paranoia, but one fear I have for high-tech Chinese products is that if a world war were to start with China, that they'd have the ability to remotely disable these kinds of products.
After the Israeli attack using pagers I think this is no longer paranoid at all.
The same goes for Chinese built cloud connected hardware, especially if it is grid connected, contains heater elements or batteries. Inverters, solar panels, vehicles, 3D printers, the list is endless and all of these are either potential fire starters or ways to destabilize the grid. Used maliciously the potential for misery is pretty large. All this crap that wants to connect to the cloud from a country where your average citizen has very limited access to the internet should give you pause: if the Chinese government thinks these connections are A-ok then they must see some advantage, especially if all the services are supposedly free of charge.
> The same goes for Chinese built cloud connected hardware, [...]
It goes even more for American built or American influenced hardware.
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China is much less likely to attack civilians. Don't project america and israel's way of war onto others. I would imagine part of their strategy is to win hearts ad minds. America just kills and kills and kills and wonders why we arent loved.
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I do not think it is paranoia. But we can have this from anywhere. American devices, EU devices; if I cannot analyse the firmware, ICs etc, what is going to guarantee these are not remotely exploitable. Even if Porsche never built such a thing on purpose, the car is connected so someone can break in, hack it and do stuff including possible overhead the battery so it ignites.
It does not have to be on purpose quality wise either: I had 2 spicy pillows in my life (and I have a lot of gadgets, including fully Chinese ones); a Samsung flagship phone and a macbook air. Both just unannounced got very hot and broke open: no fire but still... So I would say it is possible for a state actor to remotely hack, take over and ignite your Samsung and Macbook as apparently it can already almost happen without hackers.
What to do about it? Without just fully open sourcing hardware and software, I do not know. I mean that would not help a lot if no one reads it and finds the issues/vulnerabilities, but at least we stand a chance, vs now. Unplugging from internet is not really a thing, although, when it comes to cars and airplanes i would rather see it mandatory non connected.
People don't realize that every device with a LiPo is only one (possibly malicious) update away from becoming a fuse.
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it's not paranoia
chips with backdoors which would allow exactly something like that (or many other things) have been found more then once in recent years AFIK
through a fancy personal car stopping working is the least relevant target. Network backbone, smart phones, and other core infrastructure is a much more relevant target. And even for cars all the non-personal vehicles (e.g. ambulance, trucks, police ...) are much more relevant targets.
Certainly anything that downloads over the air updates. I'm not mad that our government turned down import of EVs from a country that became an adversary
Disabling them is one thing. Having them auto-drive to select locations and self-immolate is another entirely.
The reverse is clear for Chinese people. Do you remember when, in the early 2000s, the US sold a Boeing 767 intended for Chinese presidential use, and Chinese authorities later reported finding numerous hidden listening devices on board? There is a Chinese Wikipedia article about the incident [1], but no dedicated English one. More information in English can be found here [2].
[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E6%B1%9F%E6%BE%A4%E6%B0%91%E...
[2] https://www.flightglobal.com/chinese-vip-jet-was-bugged/4121...
Sadly, the US is more likely to at war with Europe than China