Substacks

Is That a Spy in Your Car? Nadia Schadlow

Published

10 months ago

September 18, 2023

LIDAR mapping technology, provided by Chinese company Hesai, as seen from a self-driving Kodiak truck in the U.S. (Photo via Kodiak Robotics, Inc.)

You know what the Chinese government does really well? Spy.

Last year, a human rights group reported that the Chinese government had set up 100 secret “police stations”—seven of them in the U.S.—to spy on Chinese nationals. At the recently concluded G20 summit in New Delhi, the Chinese delegation refused to put some strangely shaped luggage through the hotel scanner. A hotel employee later reported that he saw “suspicious equipment” in one of the open suitcases. And just a few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese nationals, posing as tourists, have made some 100 attempts to gain access to U.S. military bases in recent years—including into a missile range in New Mexico. Chinese scuba divers have also been spotted swimming near a rocket launch site in Florida. Military investigators call them “gate-crashers.”

There is a second kind of spying that relies on technology instead of people. Earlier this year, a Chinese surveillance balloon was sighted traveling across the United States. Huawei, the giant Chinese telecommunications company that has close ties to the military, has long been suspected of creating a “backdoor” in its routers and other equipment, allowing it to scoop up information from U.S. users that can be sent back to China. In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department charged Huawei with conspiracy to steal trade secrets. (Huawei has denied that its equipment has been used to spy on the West.) And of course there’s TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, and which many U.S. officials are convinced is used to collect data on Americans.

Now comes the latest threat—a technology, soon to be ubiquitous, called LIDAR.

LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging, and it’s essentially a system of complex sensors that can, for instance, serve as the “eyes” for a self-driving vehicle. Indeed, even cars that are only semiautonomous have a LIDAR system to guide them. That is the primary way LIDAR is used today, but it is hardly its only application. It’s also a mapping technology, an aid to the growing number of “smart cities,” a tool for robotics, farming, meteorology, you name it.

As recently as 2018, most LIDAR systems sold in the U.S. were made by American companies. Today? The leading manufacturer is a company called Hesai. And though it has a Silicon Valley office, it is not a Silicon Valley company. It is a Chinese company that is now listed on the U.S. stock exchange.

How dominant is Hesai? The company says that 12 of the top 15 autonomous driving companies are Hesai customers, including Zoox, which is owned by Amazon, and Nuro, which has self-driving cars on the road in Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In 2022, Hesai sold nearly one out of every two LIDAR systems globally. For the first six months of 2023, Hesai saw a 630 percent increase in the number of units sold, far outpacing all of its American rivals put together. (Neither Google’s Waymo nor Tesla use Hesai’s LIDAR. Waymo makes its own LIDAR sensors, while Elon Musk believes that LIDAR is inferior to the system of cameras Tesla uses to see the road.)

Now, this market is set to get much, much bigger. According to the Yole Group, an international market research and strategy company, total LIDAR revenues are expected to reach nearly $5 billion by 2028, compared to $332 million in 2022. Hesai is well-positioned to capture the lion’s share of that.

This should make Americans very nervous. Why? Because the Chinese government likely sees in Hesai another means to capture information from the West that can be funneled back to China. In a statement earlier this month, Hesai insisted that its LIDAR “does not and cannot independently wirelessly transmit any operational or biometric data or data of any other kind.” But China is a country with a law that requires organizations and citizens to “support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work.” At a minimum, vigilance is required.

Yet vigilance is precisely what appears to be missing, as America increasingly uses Hesai’s LIDAR. This includes the Department of Defense.

The growing dominance of LIDAR technology in America could pose a national security threat. (Photoshop by The Free Press)

Late last year, the Defense Department awarded a $50 million contract to Kodiak Robotics, a company whose technology powers self-driving trucks—and that uses Hesai’s LIDAR system. These trucks have been deployed on military bases, which means that they have been creating detailed geospatial maps of the bases. Because these LIDAR sensors are networked, they are likely connected to sensitive security and communications systems.

What are the chances the Chinese government would like to have that information? High.

Meanwhile, high-end drones are already using LIDAR as a mapping aid. The Congressional Research Service recently described the potential threat this all poses, stating that “China could use this information to conduct military or industrial espionage or gain operational advantages in a military conflict. [Chinese] firms also could introduce malware via a software update and degrade the performance of systems using the technology.”

And it’s not just a military problem. Imagine if LIDAR becomes an integral part of the power grid, or manufacturing plants, or various kinds of American infrastructure—something that is quite likely within the next decade or so.

So why are companies willing to buy Hesai’s sensors? The answer is the same one that has allowed Chinese companies to take over solar panels, 5G, and drones. The product is good—but more importantly, less expensive than American-made LIDAR. It’s good partly because Hesai has stolen other companies’ intellectual property, just as many other Chinese companies have done over the decades. Hesai has called this allegation “baseless,” but in 2021, it settled a patent infringement suit filed by American competitor Velodyne for $20 million, plus royalty payments that will continue until 2030.

It’s cheap because Hesai is selling its LIDAR systems below its own cost—something it can afford to do because, like many cutting-edge Chinese technology companies, it has the strong backing of China’s Communist Party. Congress recently expressed fears that Chinese LIDAR companies have flooded the U.S. market with “heavily subsidized” products, and that many of these companies are receiving research support and considerable government funding.

There are voices in the U.S. government who are warning about LIDAR’s potential threat, but they are few and far between. North Carolina Senator Ted Budd, a Republican, sent a letter earlier this summer to Dr. Laura D. Taylor-Kale, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, raising the national security risks that would come with relying on Chinese LIDAR. (The Pentagon did not respond to several emails from The Free Press.)

And Congress is adding a provision to next year’s defense budget expressing concern about “the proliferation of Chinese technology in the United States that gathers critical information on U.S. geography, vehicle traffic, human patterns, and behaviors,” specifically naming LIDAR. It points out that LIDAR is used to surveil America’s critical infrastructure, including terminals and airports, and that the sensors facilitate the gathering of “enormous amounts of information.”

These developments are positive. And yet after years of highlighting the dangers of becoming dependent on China’s technology, why are we watching the same patterns unfold? It is simply not enough to express concern. The government needs to act to protect America’s commercial and national security interests.

America today is beholden to Chinese companies for antibiotics, lithium batteries, 5G equipment, and more. Allowing a Chinese company to take control of the LIDAR market would be economically foolish—and likely very dangerous.

Nadia Schadlow is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and was a Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy in 2017 and 2018. Read Geoffrey Cain’s Free Press piece about How China Got Our Nation’s Kids Hooked on ‘Digital Fentanyl.’

And become a Free Press subscriber today:

Subscribe now

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

6 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Substacks

TGIF: The Week Unburdened by the Week That Has Been Suzy Weiss

Published

13 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Union Station to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)

Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.

→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”

→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.

That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.

And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.

Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”

→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.

Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

17 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

https://marchforourlives.org/in-a-first-ever-endorsement-march-for-our-lives-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-economic-growth-regains-steam-second-quarter-inflation-slows-2024-07-25/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/biden-economy-employment-inflation.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/entertainment/jennifer-aniston-jd-vance/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/jd-vance-wrote-foreword-book-project-2025-architect-kevin-roberts-and-proceeds

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-might-not-shot-1930037

https://people.com/was-trump-struck-by-bullet-or-shrapnel-fbi-director-testifies-8683340

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-fbi-director-resign-immediately-chris-wray-rcna163641