Security in Poland and the USA – connected cars under suspicion

The Polish armed forces have banned Chinese vehicles from entering military properties.

The background to this is the concern that cameras, sensors and communication modules installed in modern cars could be used secretly. Collect location data and environmental information – and could transmit these to China in real time.

Expelled from service

Additionally, soldiers are prohibited from connecting their service phones to such vehicles. Bluetooth connections between mobile devices and on-board computers from Chinese manufacturers are also prohibited.

Remarkably, the market remains dynamic in the civilian sector. While EU countervailing duties on Chinese electric vehicles have increased sales costs, they have not halted them.

The US also bans software

The US Department of Commerce had already planned for early 2025. a regulation The finalized legislation banning certain software and hardware components from China and Russia in internet-connected vehicles. This affects connectivity systems and components for partially automated driving.

US authorities justify the ban with concrete threat scenarios: remotely controlled vehicles could be brought to a standstill en masse, used to stage accidents, or employed for intelligence purposes. The regulation explicitly targets "countries of particular security interest"—a diplomatic formulation that in practice primarily refers to China and Russia.

Geopolitical explosiveness

For vehicle manufacturers, this means that anyone who wants to sell on the US market must disclose their supply chains for safety-critical software components and become independent of Chinese and Russian suppliers.

Both countries are reacting to the same fundamental problem: the modern electric car is a mobile data center. GPS tracking, camera systems, microphones, LTE modules, and over-the-air updates theoretically turn vehicles into tools for surveillance or sabotage – if the manufacturer or software supplier is subject to government pressure.

Conclusion

Poland is acting reactively and selectively by selectively isolating military areas. The US is pursuing a systemic approach and intervening directly in the global supply chain. Both strategies could set a precedent: The EU is already discussing whether similar regulations for critical infrastructure and government fleets would be necessary.

This increases the pressure on Chinese vehicle manufacturers to structurally address Western security concerns – or face permanent exclusion from government and defense markets.

Sierks Media / © Photo: Symbolic image – AI-generated visualization created with Microsoft Designer (designer.microsoft.com) and DALL·E (OpenAI) (1)