Consumers to automakers: Don’t sell us an Hezbollah pager
Connected, self-driving and a big battery: Hmm
“Well, at least those pagers didn’t weigh 5,000 lbs or drive themselves.”
The exploding Hezbollah pagers were a wake-up call to something I have been writing about for a decade: The “connected car” risk of remote-control terrorism posed by cars that combine three features in particular:
Cars that are connected wirelessly to the Internet.
Cars that have the ability to drive themselves, even a little bit.
Cars that have a huge battery that can burn more intensely and for longer than a gasoline car, and can be triggered remotely.
Unlike a gasoline (or diesel) tank, the batteries in a Battery-Electric Vehicle (BEV) are controlled by software. This means that a software command could be issued that would deliberately cause a thermal event that would cause the battery to go up in flames on a moment’s notice.
This becomes an even more dangerous problem when you combine it with some level of self-driving capability. For this purpose, there is no need to arrive anywhere near perfection. All that is needed is a decent level of temporary approximation.
Think of it as a robotic version of the “Telefon 1977” (movie featuring Charles Bronson) problem I described in my 2019 article, among other places: https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/attack-on-saudi-oil-self-driving-cars-will-never-become-legal-15091327
Google: Don’t be evil
Remember the Google motto when they started, a quarter-century ago? “Don’t be evil.” That was supposed to mean that the Internet was going to be liberating and free. All the world’s information at your fingertips.
Sometime around 2016, plus or minus a few, Google went from that motto to the complete opposite: censorship. The point here is that sometimes a technology arrives on the scene in a seemingly innocent fashion, bringing benefits. Then, once the Trojan Horse has entered the village, it becomes a tool of oppression or worse. It happened with Google in less than two decades. It could happen with connected (battery) cars in the near future.
Automakers: Know thy customer
Automakers think that they know their customers, and often they do -- perhaps, or at least in part. But not always.
Right now, I think there is a marker for automakers to market as their most important features:
No connectivity.
No self-driving capability.
No big batteries.
Ask yourself: If you were a Hezbollah, would you want to be in or even near a car that’s connected, with cameras and microphones, is able to move on its own, and has a giant battery that if triggered remotely would destroy an entire block?
The answer is of course “no.” And neither should you. Yesterday, Hezbollah -- tomorrow, you. Why you? Well, who the heck knows. Who knew when Google got started around 1999 or so that its main feature less than two decades later would be to censor libertarians on behalf of socialists who control The Deep State? Even I failed to anticipate this in 1999 -- or even a decade later.
Test yourself: What if the shoe was on the other foot?
I mentioned the example of Google above, how it has turned into a socialist censorship machine years after having been “Don’t Be Evil” as a Libertarian utopia of free-flowing information and knowledge. If you are a hard-core leftist, perhaps you like this outcome.
If so, let’s try the opposite scenario: Tesla. A few short years ago, you were a Tesla fan. The prospect of a connected car that can drive itself and has a giant battery appealed to you. Now consider that the person who controls Tesla’s servers could, “theoretically”, issue a command to your Tesla to make a sharp turn against incoming traffic, or drive over the edge into a 200 yard fall over a mountainside? Or activate a fire when you’re parked inside your garage? I’m obviously not saying that this has been done or has even been contemplated, but would you want a certain person to have this power over your life or death? What if this person disagrees with your politics 100%?
If you think it is okay for Google to have this power, would you like the head of Tesla to have this power too? Even if he really dislikes you?
The point is that when it comes to almost any argument in politics or technology, you have to be able to ask the critical “What if the shoe was on the other foot” argument. If your position does not pass that test, then perhaps you need to re-think your position.
Buy an old car instead. Or at least one that is disconnected from The Internet.
Pro tip to automakers today: Start making those again.
It’s not about hacking
Most of the focus on the risks of connected cars over the last decade has been around hacking. Basically, someone other than the automaker “hacks” into the software of the car and causes it to do things that the automaker certainly did not intend. That’s not what I am focused on here, although that remains a risk too. My main point here is that if the automaker, or any of its component makers or a government to which the equipment maker has to respond and obey, wants to do something that you -- the consumer -- don’t want, then we have a problem. A giant Hezbollah pager problem -- but 5,000 pounds heavy, on wheels, perhaps driving itself to the target.
Here is an example of the “old” types of threats that neither Hezbollah nor you should be focused on in this context: