How China could paralyse Britain’s roads and kill thousands — by hacking into cheap electric cars they sold us
IT’S a bitingly cold day in mid- December 2027. China is blockading Taiwan and Britain is poised to join the United States in rallying to the beleaguered island democracy’s defence — a move that could presage World War III.
And then comes a brutally blunt message: every one of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese-made electric cars on UK roads stops dead.
Drivers frantically hit the controls, but to no avail. They try to get out. But the doors refuse to open. Then the pile-ups begin, as other vehicles plough into the suddenly stationary cars. Crippling traffic jams prevent emergency services reaching the scenes of accidents and thousands of injured victims die in agony.
As time goes by, people imprisoned in their cars become increasingly desperate and implore passers-by to break the win-dows to help them escape suffocation or hypothermia. Some are lucky, others not.
Commerce is throttled, too. Even with every breakdown lorry in the country mobilised, it is weeks before our transport system returns to normal.
The economic and human cost is colossal. Our decision-makers, and those in other countries, all too readily draw the conclusion that this is no time for a mili-tary entanglement in a faraway land.
The bullies of Beijing have just won a decisive early battle in the struggle for global domination.
Only last month, the U. S. Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, raised exactly this danger. ‘ Imagine if there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of Chinese-connected vehicles on American roads that could be immediately and simul-taneously disabled by somebody in Beijing,’ she said.
But why would business-minded car makers risk destroying their brands by potentially allowing them to be used for sabotage? No foreign customer would ever trust a Chinese-made product again.
THE answer is simple. The Chinese Communist Party enjoys absolute control over its subjects, at home and abroad. If it deems a cyber- attack necessary for geopolitical purposes, then that attack will happen, regardless of any transient commercial cost.
We should be in no doubt of the peril posed by China. The Gov-ernment’s keystone Integrated Review of our national security calls it an ‘ epoch- defining chal-lenge to the international order’ and MPs were briefed last month about a new wave of interference aimed at undermining democracy.
Only this week, the scale of China’s ambitions became clear as pictures emerged showing spe-cialised trains that can transport EVs across the Eurasian land-mass. Unlike the old, slow method of shipping by sea, transportation by rail allows the vehicles to reach Europe in just 20 days.
We have already moved to coun-teract some of the dangers threat-ened by this tsunami of Chinese technology. Huawei components were stripped, belatedly, from our next-generation 5G mobile phone system, for example.
But we have been naive, greedy and complacent when it comes to other threats. What we fail to understand is that China’s relent-less data harvesting in the West provides Beijing with the raw material to understand, penetrate and control foreign countries.
Artificial intelligence software running on the world’s most powerful computers sifts and scans every particle of informa-tion, looking for patterns and anomalies to exploit.
The biggest new vulnerability relates to the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT). This is the interconnection of kit, from thermostats, door-bells and household audio devices to video equipment and lighting systems across industry, commerce and public services.
At the IoT’s heart are the small ‘modules’ that connect the equip-ment to the internet. Chillingly, China provides more than three-fifths of these cheap and ubiqui-tous data-transfer gadgets. They are remotely controlled and can be updated by the manufacturer whenever necessary. They also run software that is rarely, if ever, subjected to a security review.
The gain in convenience is enormous. But we are ignoring the downside. Just one compro-mised device can be used to infect others, enabling a distant foe to steal data or wreak havoc.
Electric cars add a new dimension to the threat, adding what are, in effect, mobile surveil-lance devices to the picture.
The result of China’s ravenous appetite for our data will be that every commercial, political, military and intelligence secret in every Western country is potentially compromised. So, too, is every facet of our personal privacy, making us vulnerable to blackmail and bullying.
Following Gina Raimondo’s warning, Washington has launched an investigation into the security dangers of ‘foreign-made’ ( i. e. Chinese) vehicles connected to the internet. This is a welcome development but one which has come dangerously late.
Unhindered by environmental rules and labour standards, and with the full backing of their government, Chinese car makers are on track to dominate the glo-bal market for electric vehicles.
They have secured huge advan-tages in the world market for lithium — vital for batteries — and the rare minerals required to make high-tech devices.
Though their products may lack the polish and pizzazz of Western marques such as Tesla, they benefit from a huge home market, which offers them economies of scale and a chance to hone their technology and expertise.
That helped China to become the world’s biggest car exporter last year, with its competitive advantage in electric vehicles set to increase further as it builds factories abroad.
YES, the market share of EVs fell last month but, with Chi-nese ones costing around £9,000 less than their Western-made counterparts, it seems likely that firms such as Tesla will bear the brunt of this downturn.
Tens of thousands of Chinese cars will be sold in Britain this year. This creates an economic bonanza for Beijing and gives it a geopolitical advantage, too.
For modern electric cars are computers on wheels. To function properly, they must be constantly connected to the internet, so they can collect and share data on their performance.
This is a recipe for mayhem. Hackers dem-onstrated years ago how easy it was to disable a single vehicle remotely. With the full weight of a state cyber- warfare agency behind it, such attacks would be devas-tating and widespread.
And sabotage is not the only threat. Computer-ised cars give enormous insight into our lives, as they collect data on everything from our loca-tion and driving behav-iour to our taste in music, mobile phone usage and ‘voice-prints’ (graphic representations of a per-son’s voice that show its component frequencies).
A Chinese-made track-ing device was found in the electronics of at least one Downing Street vehicle last year but, in a Chinese-made car, there would be no need to plant a bugging device. The car is the bug.
It is no coincidence that the Chinese authorities control the movement of Western-made electric vehicles such as Teslas, banning them from going near sensitive government and military sites. We impose no such restrictions.
In July last year, MPs and peers on the cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) reported that China was targeting the UK ‘prolifically and aggressively’ but that our Government lacked the ‘resources, expertise or knowl-edge’ to respond.
The truth is, when it comes to Chinese EVs, our decision-makers are still asleep at the wheel.