Earlier this week, at the Australian Financial Review Cyber Summit, cybersecurity expert Alastair MacGibbon highlighted an alarming national security risk posed by millions of China-manufactured connected devices operating across Australia. He warned that particularly internet-connected electric vehicles (EVs) represent new threat vectors for hybrid warfare operations, one in which he said these vehicles could be transformed into “ticking time bombs.”
On Tuesday, MacGibbon, former cybersecurity adviser to Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and now chief strategy officer at CyberCX, warned, “Those cars that we talk about, whether they’re electric or not, are listening devices, and they’re surveillance devices in terms of cameras.”
But worse, he cautioned, “Take off the safety features of household batteries so that they overcharge. Take off those same safety features for electric vehicles. Just turn them off from the manufacturer so that those vehicles explode. Degrade their ability to drive at peak hour in select cities.”
A former cybersecurity chief has sounded the alarm on Chinese-made electric cars. Alastair MacGibbon says the government’s policies towards Chinese-made EVs are inconsistent with security priorities urging public officials not to use them. He says the cars are listening devices… pic.twitter.com/QZRyC7qGTj
— 7NEWS Australia (@7NewsAustralia) September 17, 2025
MacGibbon’s comments echo warnings in a recent note we penned, citing the book China’s Total War Strategy: Next-Generation Weapons of Mass Destruction – published by the CCP BioThreats Initiative and authored by Dr. Ryan Clarke, LJ Eads, Dr. Robert McCreight, and Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, which outlines the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pursuing an aggressive, multifaceted “total war” against the U.S. that leverages next-generation weapons, including synthetic narcotics (e.g., fentanyl and cannabinoids), bioweapons (e.g., Covid-19), psychological manipulation and influence (e.g., TikTok), and a broad arsenal of irregular warfare tools.
Clarke and the other authors describe this strategy as the CCP’s “assassin’s mace”, an indirect, hybrid warfare doctrine designed to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities and collapse the nation from within. The results are already visible in the fentanyl epidemic and the broader drug crisis. Also, remember, “rogue” devices have been found in Chinese solar panels.
Last month, four Chinese brands – BYD Auto, GWM (Great Wall Motors), MG Motor (SAIC), and Chery – broke into Australia’s top ten in sales for the first time. Tens of thousands of Chinese EVs are now on Australian highways, alongside millions of other connected devices that could be weaponized in hybrid warfare. Remember when America faced the exploding Chinese scooter problem?
All it takes is one line of intentionally bad code to go boom.
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