A defence official has confirmed that the Ministry of Defence is currently examining the potential threats associated with Chinese-made cars, while staff have been advised to avoid talking about classified information in any cars.
Safety Advice for Defence Personnel
During a recently aired interview on LBC, Luke Pollard addressed claims that MoD officials have been instructed not to talk about classified material while riding in Chinese vehicles.
He said that the MoD is “looking into” Chinese vehicles within its fleets, but stressed that security is a concern in every contemporary vehicles.
We have a collection of thousands of cars in the MoD and Chinese ones account for a tiny fraction.
But regardless of if you’re traveling in a Chinese car or a car from another country, our instruction to our people is not to plug MoD technology into their vehicle, to avoid having discussions at a classified level in any vehicle, because of the increasing risks of surveillance that are present in every single automobile, to restrict those secret talks in protected areas. This is a prudent and reasonable thing for anyone worried about security.
When it was put to him that it would be prudent for the ministry to stop using every Chinese vehicles, the minister responded: ‘That’s exactly what we are looking into at the present time.”
Wider Defence Background
This revelation follows reports from Norway and Denmark have alerted the UK to the presence of multi-purpose kill switches in Chinese-made buses, which could enable the Chinese government to disable buses and bring chaos to transport systems.
Furthermore, a Russia spy ship was reportedly directing lasers at Royal Air Force pilots, described as a “highly dangerous” act by defence officials.
This wider defence situation underscores the significance of robust measures and caution in every aspects of government operations, including vehicle use to communication habits.
