I’ve in the meantime abandoned the idea of commenting here on everyday goings-on and the general drift of politics. The level of idiocy on the still-open scale of human failure of reason is simply too high, and life is too valuable to squander it in combat with the vassals of unbearable stupidity.
One also has to keep in mind that we’re dealing with self-reinforcing echo chambers. Which means the subjective impression that idiocy is multiplying is misleading. All the more when you consider that the voice of reason is getting quieter and quieter. Because who wants to bother with the village idiots who seize every opportunity to belt out the old chant “Burn the witch!”?
Up to now, the only real refuges of rationality were those subject areas that were generally grounded in a scientific foundation. Automotive cybersecurity used to be one of them. Now, however, the fee-fed scribblers of the writing guild (offline or online) have also discovered this little shelter of bliss and are flooding it with ignorance, prejudice, assumptions, sweeping generalisations and primitive market-protectionist bullshit.
Want an example? Here you go. FR headlines: “Electric buses can be stopped from China.” Focus Online blows the same horn: “Norwegians suddenly discover that China can remotely control and even stop 850 of their electric buses.” The list of bandwagon copyists could be extended at will [1, 2, 3, …].
What actually happened? The Norwegian transport operator Ruter carried out a “strictly secret cyber test in a disused tunnel” in Franzefoss in Sandvika on electric buses from the Chinese manufacturer Yutong and the Dutch manufacturer VDL. But why on earth would you do it in a decommissioned underground tunnel of all places? Well, presumably out of fear that the evil bits and bytes from the Chinese vehicle might leak into pristine Norwegian nature and trigger chaos and anarchy there – or, much simpler, they probably didn’t find an EVM chamber the buses would fit into.
In this test, utterly breathtaking discoveries were made. The results read like the cabinet of cyber horrors:
- the Chinese manufacturer has direct digital access to every single bus for software updates and diagnostics
- the manufacturer has access to the battery control system
- in theory, the bus can be stopped or disabled by the manufacturer
- the manufacturer can open, close and even lock the driver’s doors
- the manufacturer has full access to all diagnostic data, parameters, faults and problems of the bus
So apparently these are absolutely UNBELIEVABLE discoveries that are supposed to turn riding such buses into a horror trip.
Unfortunately, the rent-a-pens didn’t invest a single second in background research. If they had, they would have noticed that Norway is a contracting party to the 1958 ECE Agreement and that the requirements of UN R155 on automotive cybersecurity and UN R156 on software update management therefore apply there. And buses are vehicles of category M and thus subject to the above provisions. All these terrifying findings are an expression of compliance with those regulatory requirements. In other words: if Yutong wants to sell these buses in an ECE member state such as Norway, the test results have to look exactly like that.
If, on the other hand, the VDL bus from the Netherlands cannot present an equivalent result, I would, if I were VDL, start to worry. Or I would join the long line of reality-deniers of technical progress whose lineage did not start with the coachmen.
It is almost trivial to mention that there are further normative requirements (for example Euro 7, which does not apply in Norway directly but is implemented there in a corresponding way) that render the documented outcome completely plausible and compliant (for instance access to the battery control system and access to diagnostic data).
One single sentence in the FR article is, however, quite remarkable. It reads: “Rheinmetall also has concerns about China’s influence.” After that the article pivots to the German market, which Yutong obviously also wants to enter with its products. If you didn’t know better, you might think that European manufacturers are playing lobbying via ricochet. Which then raises the question why of all people Rheinmetall’s view on this topic is presented as the “expert view.” Personally, I’d be worried about the halo or negativity effect. But of course that is a completely unrealistic scenario. After all, we live in an economic order in which the market regulates itself. So it is obviously absurd to think that industry associations enlist the press as the “fourth estate” in their lobbying.
