A bipartisan group of legislators is trying to advance a bill that would essentially put square wheels on Chinese cars in the US. The Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026 would go miles beyond past moves to make China’s booming auto industry unwelcome in the US and ban the “importation, manufacture, sale, resale, or introduction into interstate commerce” of connected cars made or designed by firms in the PRC as well as Iran, North Korea, or Russia. Backers of this measure–starting with Sens. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who introduced it as S.4429, and Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and John Moolenaar (R-MI), who then sponsored a companion bill as H.R.8730–invoke the risk of the Chinese Communist Party requiring surveillance through these vehicles and its history of subsidizing its auto industry. “These cars have enormous amounts of data-collection capabilities,” Moreno said on a panel hosted Monday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, moderated by AEI fellow Chris Miller. “Imagine TikTok, but on steroids.” (Allegations of Chinese surveillance via the social platform now controlled by a US-led group of investors remain unproven; the Supreme Court only held those concerns credible last January when it upheld a law banning app-store and hosting transactions with TikTok.) Citing scenarios of Beijing directing Chinese carmakers to exfiltrate data from connected cars or take control of them remotely, Moreno called these vehicles “obviously an insane national security threat.” Sitting alongside Moreno, Moolenaar backed up his risk assessment. “Their national security laws basically require anyone to do the bidding of the CCP,” he said of Chinese carmakers. The Biden administration thought this enough of a risk to issue a regulation in its last days restricting connected-car systems from China. In June, the Commerce Department used that authority to deny Polestar, partly owned by the Chinese