October 24, 2024
America Needs Clear Standards for China Tech Decoupling
Last month, the Biden administration proposed a rule to effectively sweep Chinese cars from the U.S. market. If enacted, the rule would ban the sale or import of any “connected vehicle” with certain Chinese technology. Today’s cars are essentially smartphones on wheels, equipped with increasingly sophisticated external connections, software, and sensors that constantly monitor the world around them. The administration rightly worries that Beijing could exploit these underlying technologies to turn American vehicles into unwitting surveillance vans for the Chinese Communist Party—or worse, to hijack them entirely.
Policymakers are slowly awaking to a rise in China’s cyber threat and the United States’ digital vulnerability. If there is a growing consensus to expand the country’s decoupling from Chinese tech, however, there is still no clear vision for how to do so responsibly.
This broad, virtually unchecked authority to ban Chinese apps and products resembles more of a loaded gun than a considered policy.
Washington must soon move beyond ad hoc bans against specific apps (such as TikTok) and categories (such as connected vehicles) and articulate a broader policy that identifies clear risks and limiting principles to inform which Chinese technologies Washington can tolerate in the U.S. market, and which it cannot. Absent this, policymakers risk barreling toward an improvisational, potentially vast tech decoupling from China with poorly understood consequences for American consumers, industry, and foreign policy.
The absence of a clear risk mitigation framework for Chinese tech creates uncertainty for the businesses, factories, and farmers who rightly wonder if their Chinese-linked products and components will be the next mole that Washington decides to whack. Today’s vague and easily abused executive power to ban Chinese tech also gives Beijing pretext to justify its own arbitrary restrictions on the $154 billion of U.S. exports to its massive market.
Read the full article on Foreign Policy.
More from CNAS
-
Commentary
Indo-Pacific Security / Technology & National Security
Sharper: Securing Critical InfrastructureThe systems that keep global society running are increasingly in adversaries’ sights. From sabotage on the subsea cables that enable global connectivity to missile attacks on ...
By Charles Horn
-
CNAS Insights
Technology & National Security
CNAS Insights | A Closing Door on Open Weights? Implications for AI SovereigntyEarlier this month, Beijing announced draft export controls that signaled a potential shift in its longtime embrace of open-weight models. Foreign capitals and corporations sh...
By Vivek Chilukuri
-
Podcast
Technology & National Security
U.S. Military Forges Ahead on Autonomous WeaponryPaul Scharre joins All Things Considered to discuss the use of autonomous weapons in the U.S. military. Listen to the full interview on All Things Considered....
By Paul Scharre
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Explainer: How the Trump Administration is Aiming to ‘Modernize’ U.S. SanctionsTo successfully engage the private sector, civil society, and foreign governments, the administration needs to articulate its sanctions modernization efforts in greater detail...
By Alex Zerden
