Former CSIS chief warns that China 'will acquire' all information about you in Chinese EVs - National Post

A shipment of Chinese electric vehicles arrives in Argentina earlier this year. The flow of Chinese-made EVs to Canada has begun, with the pace expected to ramp up in 2027, despite concerns they could be used to gather data for Beijing. Photo by Tomas Cuesta/AFP via Getty ImagesArticle contentOTTAWA — As Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers boost exports to Canada, the country’s former spy chief warned that everything you do in or around one of those cars will be acquired by China.

In a rare interview last month, former CSIS head David Vigneault did not mince his words: China’s theft of Western intellectual property amounts to a “lost generation of prosperity” for Canada. Furthermore, the Chinese government will use Chinese electric vehicles to further harvest data on Canadians and foreigners, he told the BBC’s The Interview.

“Not to overhype it, but there is the reality that all of your data, what you say, where you go, with whom you are, who you associate with, everything you do around your car, will be acquired by China,” Vigneault said if had concerns about Chinese electric vehicles.

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“It is not a question for me, it is a reality,” added Vigneault, who headed CSIS from 2017 to 2024.

Vigneault is not the first current or former Five Eyes intelligence chief to express concerns about Chinese-made electric vehicles. But he is the most high-profile recent Canadian intelligence official to plainly state grave concerns about how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will use them as intelligence-collecting devices.

The Chinese government has consistently denied any claims that its domestic companies can be used as information-gathering platforms.

In an interview with National Post Thursday, Vigneault further detailed how the PRC can use data harvested from Chinese gear like electric vehicles or cameras to build intelligence databases. He pointed to recent reporting by this newspaper on concerns over Chinese surveillance camera giant Hikvision’s presence in Canada as another example of China’s large-scale data collection.