China Hawks Light on LiDAR

House China hawks called for an immediate investigation of all Chinese Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) companies to determine whether their activities justify inclusion on US government restricted entities lists.  LiDAR technologies have broad applications in navigation and control, including autonomous systems.

The letter to Secretaries Gina Raimondo, Lloyd Austin, and Janet Yellen from the House Select China Committee draws liberally from a Congressional Research Service [report] from Augist 2023, 

"Given the importance of LiDAR, it is crucial to ensure U.S. technology used in foreign LiDAR systems are not being leveraged by our adversaries to create autonomous military vehicles and weapons. Urgent action is also needed to stop LiDAR produced by state-backed entities from foreign adversary countries to proliferate in the U.S. market or gain access to U.S. capital markets or U.S. critical infrastructure systems," the lawmakers wrote.

"Today, a single PRC company Hesai Technology has 47% of the global market share by sales revenue," the committee wrote.  

[Hesai reported revenues for 2022 of $174 million.  The committee may be referring to "Autonomous Mobility" market share, not the entire Lidar market]

"Increased scrutiny is required to ensure American LiDAR technologies are not advancing PRC weapons platforms or surveillance systems used to facilitate human rights abuses."

Oh, Drones Too

Committee members continued their correspondence with the Secrtetaries of Commerce, Defense and Treasury calling for action against Autel Robotics and its U.S. subsidiary, which 

"maintain deep connections to the Chinese military, known as the People's Liberation Army (PLA). This poses a direct threat to U.S. national security as U.S. state and local governments operate Autel drones that could transmit sensitive data to the PLA. The lawmakers cite additional concerns regarding Autel's PRC state-backed subsidies, Autel's presence and technology potentially enabling the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang, Autel drone components containing chips from blacklisted PRC companies ZTE and HiSilicon, and reports that Autel has continued its operations in Russia under a pseudonym.