Burton: There’s a strong case for banning the import of Chinese EVs
Already buoyed by cheap labour, China’s EV manufacturers have received hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese government subsidies to develop high-tech, attractive vehicles which could flood world markets at bargain prices and devastate domestic auto industries.
But more than suffering fiscal carnage in a price war on car lots, the darker concern is how these EVs — whose advanced software can be manipulated remotely from China — could abet Beijing’s foreign interference, even congesting Western cities and transportation systems as legions of immobilized vehicles suddenly stop working.
There is a particularly sobering realization of the role Chinese technology could play in kinetic conflict. Future wars will not be characterized by bridges being blown up in far-off lands. Technology, possibly including software embedded in cars around the world, will be used to sabotage everything from communications to transportation, health care and food supply chains.
China sells its EVs cheaply because of geostrategic benefit costed in; Huawei was typically 30 per cent cheaper than Nokia or Ericsson.
Without firing a shot, Beijing could coordinate a massive attack on our domestic stability. It could easily threaten the ability of Canadian government agencies like the Communications Security Establishment to monitor malign backdoor capabilities slipped into software updates on Chinese equipment that extend to millions of lines of code.
This issue illustrates the challenges of balancing economic benefits with national security in an increasingly interconnected world, and underscores the importance of stringent cybersecurity measures in protecting public infrastructure.
