Bill to ban certain Chinese cars approved by Senate panel

Roll Call ^ | July 22 | By Kelly Livingston

[RandFan]

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved a series of six nominations and seven bills on Wednesday, including a measure to limit the use of vehicles and vehicle technologies developed by foreign entities of concern on American roadways.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, and co-sponsored by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., would ban the import, sale and operation of vehicles manufactured by companies deemed “foreign entities of concern,” based in certain adversarial nations such as China. It would also ban the use of technologies developed by such countries, including Chinese-developed connected vehicle technologies, in the U.S.

“This is a very simple thing that we’re doing today, and quite frankly, I wish our allies had done this before. What we’re doing is we’re preventing a massive national security threat,” Moreno said. “Now, I don’t want anybody listening to this to worry about their automobile, but your automobiles today are roving electronic devices.”

He explained that remote accessibility technologies — including remote lock and ignition controls — are a concern when the companies that made the vehicles or technologies are deemed foreign entities of concern, or FECs.

[Dalberg-Acton]

The CIA’s Senator Slotkin has a freedom voting record of just 5.

https://freedomindex.us/legislator/1688/

[Doctor Congo]

It will be interesting to see what happens when someone tries to drive a Chinese vehicle across the Canadian border into the US.

[drwoof]

Any system that permits an outside agency or person to control a vehicle is a potential threat to national security. Having the power to render useless any means of transportation is highly desirable, from a military standpoint. And yes, modern automobiles are giant rolling computers. We should have stopped with ‘advancements’ in vehicular technology at electronic ignition, fuel injection, and maybe air bags... (Getting to be quite the Luddite these days...)

[jdege]

Great.

Now can we stop US companies from including such technologies in our vehicles?

[kaktuskid]

There are already Chinese vehicles coming up from Mexico..if you are a border state.

[existentially_kuffer]

>>>what happens when someone tries to drive a Chinese vehicle across the Canadian border into the US.

Carney(PM of Canada) already said China is the New World Order! Carney has destroyed Canada’s EV manufacturing by importing finished Chinese EVs into Canada’s marketplace.

[Sam Gamgee]

Yes it was a very raw deal for us. We get to keep selling crops to China, but we had to make that terrible deal allowing Chinese electrics to flood our market.

[spetznaz]

I am not typically a fan of overly-prescriptive government regulation due to how it can easily become a slippery slope, but this is likely a good thing. Europe let Chinese EVs come in, and they have ended up dominating local brands in both affordability and quality.

On other things, let’s see if the government does the same for Chinese AI models. It is impossible for the valuations of XAi (Grok), OpenAI (Chat GPT), and Anthropocene (Claude Fable/Opus/Sonnet) to stay where they are if Chinese open-weight models are available. The American models are the best, but they are too expensive (Uber blew through their annual budget for AI in one quarter). Chinese AI models are however almost as good (some like K3 are near-equivalents to Fable), are open weight (meaning you can download them to your servers and own them rather than sending data to who knows where), and importantly, are bloody cheap!

I would expect the government to also ban those in order to keep things competitive. It is the only way the big AI companies here can survive.

[spetznaz]

Anthropocene = Anthropic