Auto Giants Want Congress To Ban Cheap Chinese Electric Cars To 'Protect Consumer Privacy'

I've already noted how the next twelve to twenty-four months will be filled with a bipartisan parade of U.S. lawmakers pushing shitty laws that ban Chinese tech (drones, vacuums, AI, electric cars) under the pretense of protecting U.S. consumer privacy and national security.

I've also noted how this sort of anti-China U.S. protectionism is broadly stupid and harmful, especially when adopted by a government that's too corrupt, ignorant, xenophobic, and incompetent to function.

Right on cue a coalition of large U.S. automakers are ramping up pressure on Congress to ban cheaper Chinese vehicles from being sold in the United States. Under the misleading banner of the "Alliance for Automotive Innovation," the industry implies this is necessary to protect U.S. consumer privacy:

“Right now, Chinese automakers are dumping subsidized vehicles with connected software and hardware around the world,” John Bozzella, CEO of the group, said in the letter seen by CNBC. “This hasn’t happened inside the U.S. yet, but given the scale and urgency of this threat, we urge you to enact a Chinese vehicle, software and hardware ban before adjourning this year and make this policy the law of the land.”

Here's the thing: U.S. automakers have some of the worst privacy standards and ratings of any industry in the country. A Mozilla report last year found U.S. automakers collect all manner of sensitive driving, demographic, biometric, phone, and behavior data, then sell that information to any random nitwit, including your insurance company, data brokers, or foreign intelligence agencies.

Bozella knows that the domestic U.S. auto industry endlessly spies on U.S. consumers (often without their knowledge or consent), so he tries to stay ambiguous about any accusations, referring vaguely to "high risk hardware":

“Enacting a permanent ban on Chinese vehicles and high-risk hardware and software in the 119th Congress will send a clear and bipartisan message that China’s strategy to dominate global automotive manufacturing will be met with a national security policy response from the American government,” Bozzella said.

Coverage of this stuff by the likes of CNBC is omits a few important things.

Most importantly the fact the U.S. is too corrupt to pass modern privacy laws or regulate data brokers because it has actively decided that making money off this data is more important than public safety. And because it abuses this market dysfunction to buy this data itself to avoid having to get pesky warrants.

As a result, data from every piece of tech you own (your phone, TV, router, browser, laptop, apps, electrical meter, security system, smart refrigerator) harvests vast details about your every daily fart and movement, and then funnels that data to dodgy and largely unregulated data brokers.

Those data brokers then turn around and sell that data to a large assortment of random assholes, including domestic right wing extremists who have used it to target abortion-clinic visitors with health care disinformation, or foreign governments who've used it to target and kill U.S. troops.

U.S. Chinese EVs are significantly cheaper, smaller, and in many instances better than much of what's on offer here; U.S. automakers are so desperate to avoid Americans even seeing these products that they've pressured Michigan lawmakers to ban Chinese EVs from even visiting the state.

That proposal, pushed by Michigan Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Haley Stevens, was also sold as a way to protect U.S. consumer privacy and national security:

“We’re gonna be aggressive here because Michigan jobs are on the line, but also so is national security. So close our border to Chinese vehicles and Chinese technology in the vehicles, even for day trips. That’s how aggressive we believe we need to be right now,” Stevens said while speaking at a policy conference.

Her partner in the legislation went much further. “They can certainly come across the border, drive up to Selfridge Air Force base, take some video with the car. The car is a traveling surveillance package. And all of that data that the car is collecting is being sent straight back to Beijing,” Slotkin said.”

"Take some video with the car." Indeed.

Because U.S. privacy enforcement is a gargantuan shitshow, it's trivial for Chinese intelligence to buy up your daily location, movement, browsing, driving, and other data habits from any number of existing tech or apps – and then utilize that data to spy on you. They don't need Chinese cars roaming our streets.

This is a fight our lawmakers refused to have because they were too afraid to stand up to corporate power, making this a sad and meaningless pantomime.

I maintain that the ideal policy involves letting Chinese companies compete in the U.S. market, but maintaining well-staffed and competent competition, labor, environmental, privacy, and consumer regulators to weed out bad actors, protect labor, and ensure that everybody is operating on a level playing field.

Giant U.S. companies don't want that because it means more competition, stricter oversight of their own dodgy business practices, more power for labor, and reduced quarterly earnings. So instead you get this clumsy-ass protectionism, sold under the pretense it's actively protecting the U.S. consumer from harm.

Corporate press coverage of this stuff tends to downplay or ignore the fact that when corrupt buffoons try to implement protectionism, it generally doesn't go well.

Four straight years of hyperventilating about Chinese control of TikTok resulted in a bipartisan cast of lawmakers shoveling the app off to Trump's billionaire friends, whose privacy-violating surveillance and propaganda ambitions are every bit as bad– if not worse – than the Chinese-tethered execs they supplanted (Facebook wound up being a major player behind the fear-mongering campaign).

The Trump administration ban on quality cheap Chinese vacuums and drones is just as senseless. Eliminating them from the market reduced consumer choice, raised prices, and resulted in a weird game of whac-a-mole by a Trump FCC that's not competent enough to enforce the restrictions properly.

Now with Chinese companies developing cheaper and equally powerful AI models, big tech giants will also spend the next two years pushing protectionist new laws that legalize all their own worst habits, while protecting their walled-garden software automation ambitions from the pesky threat of competition.

You know, because Silicon Valley giants very much care about privacy, democracy, national security, and the rule of law.

If anybody in this chain of dysfunction cared about consumer privacy they'd pass a modern privacy law that holds companies (and executives personally) accountable for data breaches and anti-consumer harms. If they cared about national security they'd aggressively excise Trumpism from the body politic.

Instead we get this weird protectionist pantomime that only makes everything worse, propped up by a consolidated corporate media owned by affluent men positively geeked at the idea of a government singularly focused on coddling domestic corporate power.