The dangers of going driverless

The Washington Post

Driverless cars “may not be all they are cracked up to be,” said Robert Samuelson. Both Detroit and Silicon Valley are rushing headlong into developing autonomous car technology, spurred by the hope that it will dramatically reduce fatal traffic accidents and allow commuters to reclaim the billions of hours they collectively spend sitting in traffic each year. That certainly sounds like a “seductive future.” But we are underestimating the grave threat of hacking. Cybercriminals might discover how to hijack the digital controls of these new vehicles, disabling the engine or brakes. Hackers could lock a car remotely and refuse to open the doors until a ransom was paid, in an echo of the recent global ransomware computer

attacks. A cyberassault by a hostile nation or terrorist group would be even more serious. “Imagine the chaos if some adversary immobilized 10 percent of the light-vehicle fleet, leaving about 25 million cars and trucks sprawled randomly along roads from Maine to California.” We have consistently downplayed “the dangers posed by the misuse of cybertechnologies,” including with the Russian 2016 election interference and the recent Equifax hack. The more dependent on digital technology we become, the more vulnerable we are to “potentially catastrophic disruptions.” Developing driverless technologies requires extreme caution. “We are weaponizing our cars and trucks for use against us. It’s madness.”