By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 24, 2024 ~

U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo

U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced it was proposing to ban certain technologies from China and Russia in U.S. automobiles. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, explained the thinking as follows:

“Cars today have cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, and other technologies connected to the internet. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of U.S. citizens. To address these national security concerns, the Commerce Department is taking targeted, proactive steps to keep PRC and Russian-manufactured technologies off American roads.”

According to the announcement, the proposed rule, which will be put out for public comment, would do the following:

“…prohibit the import and sale of vehicles with certain VCS or ADS hardware or software with a nexus to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] or Russia. The VCS is the set of systems that allow the vehicle to communicate externally, including telematics control units, Bluetooth, cellular, satellite, and Wi-Fi modules. The ADS includes the components that collectively allow a highly autonomous vehicle to operate without a driver behind the wheel.

“The rule would also prohibit manufacturers with a nexus to the PRC or Russia from selling connected vehicles that incorporate VCS hardware or software or ADS software in the United States, even if the vehicle was made in the United States.

“The prohibitions on software would take effect for Model Year 2027 and the prohibitions on hardware would take effect for Model Year 2030, or January 1, 2029 for units without a model year.”

Wait? What? It’s a recognized national security threat but Americans must wait years before corrective action is taken? How does that make any sense?

On February 7 of this year, U.S. intelligence agencies revealed that a state-sponsored cyber actor in China, known as Volt Typhoon, had engaged in the following broad-based malicious activity inside the United States:

“The U.S. authoring agencies have confirmed that Volt Typhoon has compromised the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations—primarily in Communications, Energy, Transportation Systems, and Water and Wastewater Systems Sectors—in the continental and non-continental United States and its territories, including Guam. Volt Typhoon’s choice of targets and pattern of behavior is not consistent with traditional cyber espionage or intelligence gathering operations, and the U.S. authoring agencies assess with high confidence that Volt Typhoon actors are pre-positioning themselves on IT networks to enable lateral movement to OT assets to disrupt functions. The U.S. authoring agencies are concerned about the potential for these actors to use their network access for disruptive effects in the event of potential geopolitical tensions and/or military conflicts. CCCS assesses that the direct threat to Canada’s critical infrastructure from PRC state-sponsored actors is likely lower than that to U.S. infrastructure, but should U.S. infrastructure be disrupted, Canada would likely be affected as well, due to cross-border integration. ASD’s ACSC and NCSC-NZ assess Australian and New Zealand critical infrastructure, respectively, could be vulnerable to similar activity from PRC state-sponsored actors.”

Monday’s announcement from the U.S. Commerce Department comes just one week after pagers and walkie-talkies were detonated by Israel in an attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dozens of people, including four children, were killed in those detonations and thousands were injured or maimed – overwhelming area hospitals during the two days of attacks on September 17th and 18th.

According to a New York Times report last week, Israel had not tampered with the pagers and walkie-talkies but had actually set up a shell company to manufacture them as future deadly devices to attack Hezbollah.

The (paywall) Times report included this stunning revelation:

“By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.”

Approximately 30 seconds after we first heard the initial news reports that Israel had planted explosives in pagers which it could simultaneously detonate with a code, we stated out loud: “That’s going to unleash mass suspicions about the safety of the entire global supply chain.”

Is anyone looking at their cellphone or iPad in the same way this week?