The Biden administration announced a sweeping initiative on Monday to ban Chinese-developed software from Internet-connected cars in the US, 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 US electric grid.

The move, most likely the last major cut-off of Chinese products into the US under the Biden administration, follows the same logic that resulted in the ban on Huawei telecom equipment and the probes into Chinese-made cranes.

Combined with the effort by Congress to force TikTok to cut its ties with its Chinese owners, the initiative is a major addition to the administration’s efforts to seal off what it views as major cybervulnerabilities for the US. 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.

New York Times News Service