AINEWS
Idaho National Laboratory is testing Chinese made laser sensors that help self driving cars see, funded by an unnamed sponsor while the named potential users say they were unaware.
Idaho National Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility, is conducting a security review of Chinese-made lidar sensors, the laser-based devices that let autonomous vehicles build a three-dimensional map of the road. According to two people familiar with the effort, the lab is examining whether the devices could be used to spy on US drivers or critical infrastructure, TechCrunch reported.
Lidar, short for light detection and ranging, fires rapid laser pulses and times how long they take to bounce back. On a self-driving car, it works alongside cameras and radar to identify pedestrians, lane lines, and other vehicles at ranges where cameras alone struggle, especially in low light, fog, and rain. Most modern robotaxis and autonomous trucking prototypes treat the sensor as load-bearing: take it away, and the perception stack loses a high-resolution view of the world.
The review is funded by a company or group of companies in the electric and autonomous vehicle industries, the sources said, but the sponsors are not publicly identified. The named firms that might actually use the technology, including Rivian, General Motors, Ford, Kodiak, Lucid, Nuro, and Uber, all told TechCrunch they were not aware of the review. Nvidia, Zoox, and Aurora did not respond to questions about whether they are involved.
Idaho National Laboratory, the lead nuclear-energy research lab for the Department of Energy and the same facility that has run high-profile grid and infrastructure resilience tests, declined to comment, telling reporters in June and again in July that the work is not a project they are at liberty to discuss. China's two leading lidar suppliers, Hesai and RoboSense, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Together, the two firms account for the majority of automotive-grade lidar units shipped globally, which is why a US ban would not be a symbolic gesture.
The review is moving forward as Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Ted Budd (R-NC) push the Securing Infrastructure from Adversaries Act, which would ban or restrict Chinese lidar in US vehicles, per the TechCrunch report. Baldwin framed the concern as potential military or industrial espionage, calling the sensors a risk to American communities and national security. Congressman John Moolenaar (R-MI) is co-sponsoring a separate bill aimed at banning the sensors, and told CNBC he is worried about back doors that could transmit information to Chinese Communist interests.
A back door in a lidar sensor, in plain terms, would be a piece of code or a hardware pathway that quietly sends data, or accepts commands, from a third party without the operator's knowledge. For a sensor mounted on a fleet vehicle, the worry is that road imagery, GPS coordinates, or video of sensitive sites could flow to a foreign server. The more aggressive version of the worry is that an attacker could inject false obstacles or false-clearance signals into the perception stack, turning the sensor into a weapon against the car it sits on.
What a Department of Energy national lab can do is run hardware teardowns, firmware audits, and radio-frequency analysis on the devices. If the work were made public, it could yield a finding a regulator or procurement officer could rely on. What it cannot do, by itself, is hand Congress a clear yes-or-no answer on whether a particular sensor contains a vulnerability. That kind of finding requires public disclosure of methodology, peer review, and the right of the manufacturer to respond. None of that has happened yet.
A blanket ban would land directly on US autonomous-vehicle deployment timelines, since replacing a load-bearing sensor across a fleet requires re-qualification, new safety cases, and updated perception software. Lidar is the perception stack's high-resolution eye in low light and bad weather. The legislation is moving in parallel to the review, not waiting for its conclusions.
The funder is the open thread. Until the sponsor is named, every claim about why the review exists, and what it will conclude, runs through a party that has chosen not to be on the record.