A defense minister has confirmed that the Ministry of Defence is actively examining the possible threats associated with Chinese-made vehicles, and staff have been advised to refrain from discussing classified matters in any vehicles.
Security Advice for MoD Personnel
In a recently aired interview on LBC, Luke Pollard addressed reports that MoD officials have been instructed not to talk about secret information while riding in China-made vehicles.
The minister stated that the MoD is “investigating” Chinese vehicles within its vehicle pools, however noted that safety is a concern in every contemporary vehicles.
We have a collection of tens of thousands of cars in the MoD and Chinese ones represent a very small number.
But regardless of if you’re driving a Chinese car or a car from another country, our instruction to our people is to avoid connecting MoD devices into their vehicle, to avoid having discussions at a classified level in any vehicle, due to the increasing risks of eavesdropping that are present in all vehicle, to only have those secret conversations in secure locations. This is a prudent and sensible thing for everyone concerned about security.
After it was put to him that it would be wise for the ministry to stop using every Chinese vehicles, Pollard replied: ‘That’s precisely what we’re investigating at the present time.”
Wider Security Background
The revelation follows reports from Scandinavian countries have warned the United Kingdom to the existence of multi-purpose kill switches in Chinese-made buses, which could allow China to disable public transport and bring chaos to public transit.
Furthermore, a Russia spy ship was reportedly shining lasers at Royal Air Force aircrew, described as a “highly dangerous” act by defence officials.
This wider security situation underscores the significance of robust measures and caution in every aspects of official operations, including vehicle usage to communication habits.
