[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 75 (Wednesday, May 1, 2024)]
[House]
[Page H2775]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        CHINESE ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Michigan (Ms. Slotkin) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SLOTKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to do what I hope is part of 
the responsibility of a Member of Congress, which is to flag and alert 
for future threats that are just around the corner. For me, that threat 
is the potential for thousands of Chinese electric vehicles and 
connected vehicles coming into the U.S. marketplace.
  I am a former CIA officer and a Pentagon official, and I want to flag 
that the prospect of thousands of Chinese-made connected vehicles 
coming into the country would give them a huge amount of data, high-
fidelity data on things like U.S. military bases, key infrastructure 
facilities, like bridges and electric grid nodes, secretive locations, 
individual leaders even, all while China refuses to give reciprocity on 
that same exact data for American companies operating in China. They 
know exactly how sensitive the data is that can be collected off of 
electric and connected vehicles.
  Here is the story if you think this is fantasy: In 2021, for the 
first time, a Chinese-connected vehicle was sold in the European Union; 
not that long ago, post-COVID. Already, they have nearly 25 percent of 
the market share in the European Union. These vehicles are much nicer 
than they used to be. They are underselling every single vehicle on the 
market there because they are subsidized by the Chinese Government.
  I had the opportunity to raise this issue as a national security 
threat with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army in 
the past couple of weeks. I wanted to ask them specifically if they 
think, in their national security capacity, that mapping, radar, 
cameras, light detection, and Bluetooth-connected software would be a 
threat on our facilities here and having those kinds of volumes of 
data.
  The Secretary of Defense could not have made it more clear that this 
would give a potential adversary extremely detailed information for 
targeting, for counteracting some of our infrastructure, for going 
after even individual leaders.
  Now, we are an open-market society. What is happening right now is 
these Chinese companies are getting very interested in opening 
facilities in Mexico and using the USMCA, or what people commonly refer 
to as NAFTA, to just easily come over our border. We don't have a 
process in place right now to vet with a national security lens these 
imports that are coming in, and I have a real problem with that.
  I think we need to get better at understanding that the future of 
threats is not necessarily just tanks and fixed-wing airplanes and all 
those traditional things. It is data and who controls it. For me, this 
is an issue that I want to alert not just because I am a Michigander, 
and, of course, we make American vehicles in Michigan, but as a 
national security professional.

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