As in other lands, in Great Britain, too, policymakers fantasize that sales of vehicles using gas and diesel can be eliminated or mostly eliminated by a certain fast-approaching date without impairing anybody’s ability to get around; in the case of Britain or more precisely the United Kingdom, the date is 2030. This deadline is to be met en route to achieving the allied goal and fantasy of reaching zero net emission of carbon in the UK by 2050. Doing these things will supposedly facilitate beneficent central planning of global climate.
UK pols believe—or say they believe—that it is possible to reach such goals without simply shutting down all industry and fuel-using machines in the United Kingdom. The goals are to be reached by, in part, pushing everybody to use clunky and inefficient battery-powered vehicles.
Many of the battery-powered or electric cars to be substituted for gas cars are being imported from China. These cars incorporate complex software and other technology. Also, when it comes to foreign countries, China is very interested in surveillance of—well, in particular, Chinese nationals who have escaped China; but, also, everybody else. So some people wonder whether in their eagerness to pretend to help control global climate, policymakers in the UK are in fact helping China to spy on people in the UK.
As Will Hazell of The Telegraph puts it (August 5, 2023), “ministers fear technology could be used to harvest information on drivers.”
[S]ources at the heart of government have raised concerns that technology embedded in the vehicles [being imported from China] could be used to harvest huge amounts of information, including location data, audio recordings and video footage, while also being vulnerable to remote interference and even being disabled.
Meanwhile, a cross-party group of MPs warned the Government that Britain is poised to cede control of the “critical infrastructure” of its car market to Beijing “with all the attendant security risks”. . . .
A senior government source told The Telegraph: “If it is manufactured in a country like China, how certain can you be that it won’t be a vehicle for collecting intel and data? If you have electric vehicles manufactured by countries who are already using technology to spy, why would they not do the same here?
“They are high-risk products. We know that China always thinks in very long terms. So if they were providing a product that could do more than just deliver the consumer’s desire to go from A to B, why would they not be doing it?”
The answers: We can’t be certain that electric vehicles from China won’t be used to spy. And if the Chinese government and its technology-firm partners can do it, they have no reason not to do it.
