Biden Administration Proposes Ban on Chinese Software in Vehicles

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced an initiative Monday to ban Chinese-developed software from internet-connected cars in the United States, justifying the move on national security grounds. The action is intended to prevent Chinese intelligence agencies from monitoring the movements of Americans or using the vehicles’ electronics as a pathway into the U.S. electric grid or other critical infrastructure.

The move, most likely the last major cutoff of Chinese products into the United States under the Biden administration, follows the same logic that resulted in the ban on Huawei telecommunications equipment and the investigations into Chinese-made cranes operating at American ports.

Combined with the effort by Congress to force TikTok to cut its ties with its Chinese owners, the initiative is an addition to the administration’s efforts to seal off what it views as major cybervulnerabilities for the United States. But the effort has, in effect, begun to drop a digital iron curtain between the world’s two largest economies, which only two decades ago were declaring that the internet would bind them together.

Briefing reporters, administration officials said that national security concerns, not politics, drove the Commerce Department to propose the ban, which officials said would probably be made a permanent rule before President Joe Biden leaves office. This year, Biden announced 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, saying they were wildly subsidized in China. The announcement was notable because such cars had barely begun to enter the U.S. market — and Biden explicitly cast it as a way of keeping jobs in America.

“Many of these technologies collect large volumes of information on drivers,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters Sunday. They also connect constantly with personal devices, with other cars, with U.S. critical infrastructure and with the original manufacturers of vehicles and components.

Sullivan made reference to the U.S. concerns about what is called Volt Typhoon, which U.S. intelligence officials and the FBI say is a Chinese effort to insert code into American power systems, water pipelines and other critical infrastructure. U.S. officials fear that in a time of crisis, the code could be deployed to cripple U.S. military bases, slowing their response.

While they are assessing other industries that could be subject to software and hardware rules similar to those proposed for the Chinese auto industry, officials said that none that they are now contemplating would have the reach of the Chinese automotive ban.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .