Lawmakers Should Not Give Chinese Driverless Cars A Free Pass
In May, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act out of committee to the full House. The legislation contains a provision that on its face purports to protect the U.S. automotive industry from foreign adversaries; however, a backroom deal exception written into the provision would allow driverless vehicles manufactured in China into the United States, undermining national security. Here’s how.
Congress Is Considering Legislation That Gives Chinese Driverless Vehicles a Carve-Out
H.R. 7389 – the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act of 2026 – includes protection for domestic automakers by restricting the sale, use, or import of cars from manufacturers controlled by foreign adversaries. Section 301 of the bill states that “a manufacturer controlled by a foreign adversary may not manufacture for sale, sell, offer for sale, introduce or deliver for introduction in interstate commerce, or import into the United States, directly or through a subsidiary, joint venture, agent, dealer, or other affiliated or unaffiliated third party, any motor vehicle.”
Immediately following this language, however, the bill includes an exception that would directly benefit autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo, which is looking to use cars manufactured by Chinese electric vehicle company Zeekr. Zeekr was one of 20 companies scrutinized by Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party John Moolenaar and Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging Rick Scott in their letter to the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission questioning the presence of problematic Chinese companies on U.S. stock exchanges. In their letter, the chairmen highlighted Zeekr’s ties to the Chinese military and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), writing:
Zeekr is Geely’s consolidated premium EV brand, and is embedded in China’s military-civil fusion system through its use of Geespace’s “Future Mobility Constellation,” a satellite network developed and built by Geely to support real-time tracking, remote sensing, and secure communications for smart vehicles. Geely now equips Zeekr vehicles with direct satellite links that operate without ground networks, tying everyday EV functions to space infrastructure long controlled by the Chinese military. … Zeekr has an official CCP branch embedded in its operations, with its smart factory serving as a CCP training and propaganda base for ideological education, career grooming, and university-enterprise integration; it is also a national model for “new productive forces,” highlighting automation, AI, and 5G, and is a focus of Party-led efforts to overcome chokepoint technologies in advanced manufacturing.
A ban on cars from foreign adversaries that includes a carve-out that would allow vehicles from a Chinese company that works with the Chinese military, is in bed with the CCP, and is tied to forced labor simply does not make sense.
Chinese Driverless Cars Are a National Security Nightmare
Autonomous vehicles can already be disruptive in their day-to-day operations: in the past couple of months alone, Waymo cars have created traffic jams and gridlock that affected thousands in Atlanta, San Francisco, and Miami, taking traffic to a standstill. Even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a call to action to autonomous vehicle developers about their “pattern of interference with first responders,” saying that “[t]he agency has documented multiple instances in which AVs drove directly into active emergency scenes, blocked the paths of ambulances and firefighters, or failed to recognize and respond to basic safety conditions like flashing lights, flares, smoke, fire, and traffic cones.”
When misused, the consequences could be even worse. Earlier this year in China, the sudden and simultaneous stoppage of 500 Baidu robotaxis revealed that the taxis were all linked under centralized control. As one journalist noted, “while the car may not need human input, clearly it relies on some kind of centralized control to function. That’s concerning for obvious reasons: it’s a single point of failure, first of all, which can take down the entire fleet, at least within a certain geographic zone. Second, it means the company — and by extension the Chinese government — can control the fleet.” If this “feature” were allowed to be brought to the United States, malicious actors could wreak havoc if they took control of autonomous vehicles:
Serious technical issues with centralized command-and-control systems can clearly cause damage and perhaps even death, and that’s just normal, everyday system faults. Perhaps scarier would be malicious hackers attacking these systems and mobilizing them for profit or terror. Iran, for instance, is said to be stepping up its attempts to hack western countries as well as companies — including its recent Kash Patel email hack — and would certainly be interested in targets as juicy as these. Terrorism and asymmetric warfare are getting increasingly sophisticated. Rogue fleets of robotaxis could cause serious damage and destruction. This is a wake-up call for self-driving car makers and governments.
The more pernicious and immediate threat to national security is the scale and scope of data that autonomous vehicles by design are collecting at all times. A report from the American Enterprise Institute explains how “[p]acked with sensors, connected to the internet, and controlled by complex and opaque layers of software, modern cars represent a significant cybersecurity risk. … Chinese software, connectivity systems, and critical components in autos create significant risks of espionage and—in a potential military crisis—sabotage.” Between location sensors and GPS data, audio and camera sensors inside collecting information on drivers and passengers, and external cameras, radar, lidar, and ultrasound sensors to sense the world around them, autonomous vehicles are a privacy and national security nightmare that could collect and transmit sensitive information about individuals as well as meticulously mapping American cities and critical infrastructure.
Allowing Chinese-manufactured vehicles such access would be a grave mistake, especially considering that the legal architecture put in place by the CCP – including its National Security Law, National Intelligence Law, and Data Security Law – “together compel any Chinese company to hand its data to the state on demand, in secret, with no independent court able to refuse and no transparency to reveal when it happens.” The vast amounts of data being collected by Chinese-manufactured driverless vehicles should be considered readily accessible by the CCP. Beyond just the United States, Europe is also contending with Chinese surveillance through autonomous vehicles in real time, with Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service having recently warned that “it is certain of one Chinese company developing lidar systems for self-driving cars whose clear goal is to scan the entire area around the vehicle and send absolutely all data to a data center in China. The agency emphasizes that this turns self-driving cars equipped with Chinese technology into effective intelligence-gathering tools that can very easily be exploited for surveillance.”
Congress Should Reject Any Opening to Increase Reliance on Chinese Technology
In May, Chairman Moolenaar and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell introduced the Connected Vehicle Security Act to “prohibit the importation, manufacture, and sale of connected vehicles, software, and hardware linked to China.” This legislation would directly confront the threat posed by Chinese vehicles to American national security and should spur lawmakers to reject increased reliance on Chinese technology and manufacturing at every turn given the weighty cost of becoming dependent on an adversarial nation.
Whether through cars, medical devices, critical minerals, sensitive supply chains, or more, U.S. lawmakers must make the tough choice to secure American national security by resisting becoming enmeshed with the Chinese Communist Party. And in this case, Congress should absolutely reject any backroom deals that carve out an exception for Chinese-manufactured driverless cars to roam free on American roads.