We should be reducing our import of Chinese developed technology, “smart” devices, phones, and EVs in particular. Every Chinese business big enough to play at the global scale has the government in it’s power structure. They don’t necessarily dictate business decisions but every bit of data collected is by default accessible by the government.
Having a significant fraction of a country driving around in Chinese EVs gives an insane amount of information to the Chinese government for free. And it’s not just direct information either like the driver’s identity, with millions of cars on the road a lot can be inferred, like if the parking lots at military bases suddenly fill up on a Tuesday afternoon or traffic between a high value person’s home and an airport gets unusually slow.
Cars have cellular modems, they have wifi and bluetooth hardware, if a particular person’s device was identified, for example, at a political meeting then that person could be trivially tracked by the dozens of Chinese cars and “smart” devices that they pass in a day. The information could be smuggled home along with all the normal diagnostic, update and service info. It is not in our best interest to let the Chinese government track individuals, be it politicians, expats, or activists.
This could be done today by the our government, and it is to some extent, to identify, and locate, protesters and criminals by their mobile devices but it takes time and access to equipment and logs that the government does not always own. A competent adversary who owns millions of devices in your country can do in seconds what takes law enforcement weeks to accomplish via conventional means.
Remember that China was caught operating their own “police” force around the world not long ago, they will take advantage of any opportunity they are given to spy on other countries and gain political control.
China doesn’t plan for the next fiscal quarter they plan for the next quarter century, and Canada’s resources are in their sights.
Okay, but are American cars better from a security standpoint? I guess European cars are a valid option.
From an economic and domestic politics standpoint more trade with China is good, and maintaining what we have (like in canola and seafood) is imperative.
They were, yes, because the US was a trusted ally who shared a worldview, geopolitical interests and political ideal of democracy and other values. China never has. The US no longer does. Europe is the only other major car making economy that Canada shares values closely with but they aren’t making cheap EVs yet and may never.
More trade with China creates more opportunities for whatever their geopolitical goals are and empowers those efforts, including creating the kind of trade leverage the US has been using to force compliance. Canada must trade and the options are not ideal.
The US could conceivably do the same as I suspect China is doing, but the US government has to approach each manufacture and request or just take the data. Then they have to correlate it and so on. There was a recent writeup where someone found they could make themselves an admin (oops forgot to finish a sentence) on a US manufactures dealer network and use it to locate any vehicle sold since ~2015.
China has full access to any data collected by any business without red tape, and they are able to compel manufactures to include any feature they want.
Sure we can trade in raw materials and simple manufacturing but we need to stick to importing technology that was not designed by a country that has and will continue to be hostile to Canada.
(I think you started a thought and then forgot about it, there)
Yes, it’s definitely harder for the NSA to do NSA stuff than it would be for… eh, the CAC, apparently (maybe?), but obviously it hasn’t stopped the Americans. What we really should be doing is our own counterintelligence work, where we sweep imports for funny business. And importantly, impose the basic expectation that our hardware and software isn’t spying on us in the first place, although that would be a huge shift.
Yes, that goes for phones as well. The Americans have definitely been on the lookout for hardware trojans on computing devices. Probably us too in some capacity, being in the five eyes.
I have a feeling we’ll have much easier time getting Chinese manufacturers to comply with disabling telemetry for our market without being hit with sanctions than US.
That’s true too. I actually use a Chinese brand of phone, because guess what, most of the Western brands are locked down.
Obviously there’s exceptions like FairPhone, and there’s rumors Chinese silicon gets messed with. We don’t need them to pinky swear to anything we can verify, though. We just need them to agree, and unlike somebody they’re pragmatic enough to do so.
I started using a Fairphone recently actually. It’s an EU brand, sure, but the device and software is designed and made by T2 Mobile of Shanghai. So it’s essentially the same deal - Fairphone says “we want no telemetry” and T2 Mobile says “okay” and disables it. Behind all the pretences most brands work like this. Whether it’s only hardware, or software and hardware, or some mix, it all ultimately hinges on the Chinese supplier being pragmatic and doing what they were asked to do.
From Fairphone themselves:
This is the source tree from our hardware and software supplier T2Mobile.
I’m saying that because It’s how most manufacturing of western electronics works. We tell the Chinese manufacturer what to enable and what not to enable. Then we check (or don’t) and we sell it domestically.
K, but transit takes 4-10 years to build and will still never be able to cover cases like transporting the truly frail and sickly, large amounts of stuff, or going to remote and sparse places, because the last mile edge of the network is still a last mile at minimum, especially in inclement weather.
Cars are still going to exist for the long term forseeable future, we can try and minimize their use by providing better alternatives but we still need to plan for a future where they exist.
The guy is in the big fucking chair. Right now he has the power to steer the future where we want it to be. But he ain’t going to do it because he can’t think outside the bank. We need someone with more vision and more guts.
Lmao your take is that the Prime Ministership of Canada, the free leader of all of 0.049% of the global population (almost a full half of 0.1 percent!), is the “big fucking chair” that can single handily steer global events in any way he chooses?
You’re also presuming that when he does steer them, that that steering will be out in the open and plainly obvious for everyone to see?
Of course he’s limited to Canada. He can change policies, decide to invest in greener alternatives, etc. But instead all he thinks about is counting some beans. So he’s investing in what brings profit at he detriment of everything else.
Quite frankly, the beans matter a great deal and you will get absolutely nowhere if you ignore them.
I trust him to try and change things while counting beans over people claiming that you can ignore them because they find paying attention to them boring and slow.
Eventually yes, and we should. Does it have anything to do with trade policy with China in 2026? Not particularly; it’s sort of interconnected the way everything is, but that’s all. (Or was that the joke?)
It’s bizarre because the scales have really tipped.
3 years ago, China wanted to directly interfere with Canada for the purpose of stacking the government to be more “Pro-China”, and that’s an active threat for sure. The USA just wanted favorable trade conditions and general support on the world stage.
Fast forward to now, the USA is actively trying to destabilize and divide Canada. They want a weaker nation. Seed dissert. Makes the country easier to push around. China… still obviously wants Canada to be more “Pro-China”, but for Canada to be what they want… they still want a strong Canada. A strong Canada could be a vocal counterbalance. One in disarray can not.
So, while it’s true that both countries are actively threatening Canada, their idealized vision for a Canada that can be exploited are basically polar opposites. A strong Canada willing to break ranks w/ the USA, vs a fractured weakened country thar can’t afford to.
China does not want a strong Canada. A strong Canada might speak out about Taiwan and demand change before making trade deals. A strong Canada will look for more ethical but expensive trade partners in Europe.
The US wants Canada directly for resources, China wants a scared Canada who is willing to take any deal just to get some stability.
I’d add that our opinions, like mine, have been heavily influenced by pro-US and anti-China propaganda by American and pro-American actors for a long time. I only started noticing it over the last couple of years. Now it’s obvious as day. Not saying there’s nothing to worry about. Just musing on our collective opinion towards China.
Don’t like 70% of Canadians live in urban environments though? Meaning a lot of people could probably get by with a bicycle and public transit. Not everyone of course, but the “~100% of territory is not urban” line is kinda misleading when ~100% of territory is also devoid of human activity in the first place.
Sure. But 70% bikes is still 30% cars (or busses, or offroad whatever).
Farmland has to be at least 10%, and then outside the high arctic there’s trapping and native hunting, if only when someone passes through. There’s human activity. It’s not just crudely rendered videogame scenery as soon as you leave whatever city.
Copypasta:
We should be reducing our import of Chinese developed technology, “smart” devices, phones, and EVs in particular. Every Chinese business big enough to play at the global scale has the government in it’s power structure. They don’t necessarily dictate business decisions but every bit of data collected is by default accessible by the government.
Having a significant fraction of a country driving around in Chinese EVs gives an insane amount of information to the Chinese government for free. And it’s not just direct information either like the driver’s identity, with millions of cars on the road a lot can be inferred, like if the parking lots at military bases suddenly fill up on a Tuesday afternoon or traffic between a high value person’s home and an airport gets unusually slow.
Cars have cellular modems, they have wifi and bluetooth hardware, if a particular person’s device was identified, for example, at a political meeting then that person could be trivially tracked by the dozens of Chinese cars and “smart” devices that they pass in a day. The information could be smuggled home along with all the normal diagnostic, update and service info. It is not in our best interest to let the Chinese government track individuals, be it politicians, expats, or activists.
This could be done today by the our government, and it is to some extent, to identify, and locate, protesters and criminals by their mobile devices but it takes time and access to equipment and logs that the government does not always own. A competent adversary who owns millions of devices in your country can do in seconds what takes law enforcement weeks to accomplish via conventional means.
Remember that China was caught operating their own “police” force around the world not long ago, they will take advantage of any opportunity they are given to spy on other countries and gain political control.
China doesn’t plan for the next fiscal quarter they plan for the next quarter century, and Canada’s resources are in their sights.
Okay, but are American cars better from a security standpoint? I guess European cars are a valid option.
From an economic and domestic politics standpoint more trade with China is good, and maintaining what we have (like in canola and seafood) is imperative.
They were, yes, because the US was a trusted ally who shared a worldview, geopolitical interests and political ideal of democracy and other values. China never has. The US no longer does. Europe is the only other major car making economy that Canada shares values closely with but they aren’t making cheap EVs yet and may never.
More trade with China creates more opportunities for whatever their geopolitical goals are and empowers those efforts, including creating the kind of trade leverage the US has been using to force compliance. Canada must trade and the options are not ideal.
Hmm. Are European EVs more expensive than American ones? I thought they were similar.
The US could conceivably do the same as I suspect China is doing, but the US government has to approach each manufacture and request or just take the data. Then they have to correlate it and so on. There was a recent writeup where someone found they could make themselves an admin (oops forgot to finish a sentence) on a US manufactures dealer network and use it to locate any vehicle sold since ~2015.
China has full access to any data collected by any business without red tape, and they are able to compel manufactures to include any feature they want.
Sure we can trade in raw materials and simple manufacturing but we need to stick to importing technology that was not designed by a country that has and will continue to be hostile to Canada.
(I think you started a thought and then forgot about it, there)
Yes, it’s definitely harder for the NSA to do NSA stuff than it would be for… eh, the CAC, apparently (maybe?), but obviously it hasn’t stopped the Americans. What we really should be doing is our own counterintelligence work, where we sweep imports for funny business. And importantly, impose the basic expectation that our hardware and software isn’t spying on us in the first place, although that would be a huge shift.
Honestly I’d be less worried about my car spying on me than my phone but we import those from China almost exclusively.
Yes, that goes for phones as well. The Americans have definitely been on the lookout for hardware trojans on computing devices. Probably us too in some capacity, being in the five eyes.
I have a feeling we’ll have much easier time getting Chinese manufacturers to comply with disabling telemetry for our market without being hit with sanctions than US.
That’s true too. I actually use a Chinese brand of phone, because guess what, most of the Western brands are locked down.
Obviously there’s exceptions like FairPhone, and there’s rumors Chinese silicon gets messed with. We don’t need them to pinky swear to anything we can verify, though. We just need them to agree, and unlike somebody they’re pragmatic enough to do so.
That’s right.
I started using a Fairphone recently actually. It’s an EU brand, sure, but the device and software is designed and made by T2 Mobile of Shanghai. So it’s essentially the same deal - Fairphone says “we want no telemetry” and T2 Mobile says “okay” and disables it. Behind all the pretences most brands work like this. Whether it’s only hardware, or software and hardware, or some mix, it all ultimately hinges on the Chinese supplier being pragmatic and doing what they were asked to do.
From Fairphone themselves:
Src
That is highly doubtful. The challenges would be different but I’m skeptical it would be any easier.
I’m saying that because It’s how most manufacturing of western electronics works. We tell the Chinese manufacturer what to enable and what not to enable. Then we check (or don’t) and we sell it domestically.
Yes, this is incredibly non-controversial. Which cars do you replace them with? American ones?
Fuck man. This is such a shit situation.
We need new cars NOW. But what we ought to be doing is expanding rail infrastructure and public transit.
K, but transit takes 4-10 years to build and will still never be able to cover cases like transporting the truly frail and sickly, large amounts of stuff, or going to remote and sparse places, because the last mile edge of the network is still a last mile at minimum, especially in inclement weather.
Cars are still going to exist for the long term forseeable future, we can try and minimize their use by providing better alternatives but we still need to plan for a future where they exist.
Yeah, I mean it’s as Carney said in his speech:
Material conditions intensify
The guy is in the big fucking chair. Right now he has the power to steer the future where we want it to be. But he ain’t going to do it because he can’t think outside the bank. We need someone with more vision and more guts.
Lmao your take is that the Prime Ministership of Canada, the free leader of all of 0.049% of the global population (almost a full half of 0.1 percent!), is the “big fucking chair” that can single handily steer global events in any way he chooses?
You’re also presuming that when he does steer them, that that steering will be out in the open and plainly obvious for everyone to see?
You misinterpreted my comment.
Of course he’s limited to Canada. He can change policies, decide to invest in greener alternatives, etc. But instead all he thinks about is counting some beans. So he’s investing in what brings profit at he detriment of everything else.
Quite frankly, the beans matter a great deal and you will get absolutely nowhere if you ignore them.
I trust him to try and change things while counting beans over people claiming that you can ignore them because they find paying attention to them boring and slow.
Lemmy seems to instinctively respond with “more transit” even when it doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to go too far with that one, but we’ve managed.
We can have more transit!
Eventually yes, and we should. Does it have anything to do with trade policy with China in 2026? Not particularly; it’s sort of interconnected the way everything is, but that’s all. (Or was that the joke?)
Well you said Lemmy says more transit too much, so … I had to oblige. 😄
Europe, Japan, Korea. They have their own problems too but it’s the USA and China that are actively threatening Canada.
It’s bizarre because the scales have really tipped.
3 years ago, China wanted to directly interfere with Canada for the purpose of stacking the government to be more “Pro-China”, and that’s an active threat for sure. The USA just wanted favorable trade conditions and general support on the world stage.
Fast forward to now, the USA is actively trying to destabilize and divide Canada. They want a weaker nation. Seed dissert. Makes the country easier to push around. China… still obviously wants Canada to be more “Pro-China”, but for Canada to be what they want… they still want a strong Canada. A strong Canada could be a vocal counterbalance. One in disarray can not.
So, while it’s true that both countries are actively threatening Canada, their idealized vision for a Canada that can be exploited are basically polar opposites. A strong Canada willing to break ranks w/ the USA, vs a fractured weakened country thar can’t afford to.
China does not want a strong Canada. A strong Canada might speak out about Taiwan and demand change before making trade deals. A strong Canada will look for more ethical but expensive trade partners in Europe.
The US wants Canada directly for resources, China wants a scared Canada who is willing to take any deal just to get some stability.
Insightful.
I’d add that our opinions, like mine, have been heavily influenced by pro-US and anti-China propaganda by American and pro-American actors for a long time. I only started noticing it over the last couple of years. Now it’s obvious as day. Not saying there’s nothing to worry about. Just musing on our collective opinion towards China.
See when trump says paid actors are protesting him, i think he’s funding this kind of shit.
Did you never care until Trump that you were buying so many US cars? What threat is China to Canada?
They are one of the most powerful world players and xenophobes, they are an existential threat to everyone.
Why pick characteristics indistinguishable between China and the US lol
The US? Absolutely. China? Lol.
Remember that whole thing where they interfered with elections and were policing expats from China? That never stopped.
Policing expats, sure. But what about this election interference?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_government_interference_in_the_2019_and_2021_Canadian_federal_elections
Well, I hope next time they will make the “socialist” NDP win then.
Bicycle
Aint no way am I willing or even able to bike 50km to work each way in the winter.
I do around town but a 30km commute to a 12hr shift is not really viable.
Reminder that ~100% of Canadian territory is not urban.
Don’t like 70% of Canadians live in urban environments though? Meaning a lot of people could probably get by with a bicycle and public transit. Not everyone of course, but the “~100% of territory is not urban” line is kinda misleading when ~100% of territory is also devoid of human activity in the first place.
Sure. But 70% bikes is still 30% cars (or busses, or offroad whatever).
Farmland has to be at least 10%, and then outside the high arctic there’s trapping and native hunting, if only when someone passes through. There’s human activity. It’s not just crudely rendered videogame scenery as soon as you leave whatever city.
This just in, Toronto doesn’t exist
If you haven’t seen it before, that little squiggle means “approximately”.