The EV thread

[Thryleon]

Putting hardware in place isn't about the public, it's about using the public as the distribution method. As you should well know working in IT, the car outside your office can be listening to devices on your network, and that widget / device on the accounts payable desk might not be yours to control. Some $2 novelty gadget the Billy bought Betty for Valentines Day!

We were recently alerted to stop using circuit boards manufactured in China, these are supposed to be bare boards without components, but security groups have found serial decode chips embedded within multilayer boards. You have to X-ray these boards to find them. Tiny chips capable of parroting away your data, and they cost a few cents per thousand devices, they are inconsequential like gains of sand.

Do you really think a country that spends billions of nuclear weapons or military hardware will blink at the trivial cost of adding millions of serial decode chips to devices distributed everywhere? Billions of such tiny devices would cost less than one warhead.

As you point out it's not just about military or politics, actually it's probably more about stealing IP, because that is the high cost high value proposition.

All nations would be doing this stuff given the opportunity, the naivety is thinking they wouldn't!

the arrogance is thinking they would. No car is listening to devices on my network, your car usually isn't connected to home wifi.  It might pair with your phone but when it's off that's that. 

Your point about the micro chips is important but guess what.  When 90% of everything you own is made in PRC from Australian materials or something of that nature they don't have to work too hard to infiltrate.  They've got tik tok on most kids phones around the nation.  What's the point of hitting the car when there is still that trivial little bit of important detail that they require am exfiltration method.  The chips are useless and more data doesn't equate to more information.  It's useless.

East vs West they're all farming data for the same purpose.  They all want to sell you more crap and the apps are designed to manipulate you into buying more crap you don't need because it's cheap and available.

Why go to the effort of infiltrating households when you can simply buy the data directly from Google or Apple?

It's cheaper and easier.