Asger Risom
During a highly sensitive security drill, Norwegian military personnel discovered that their Chinese-built rental cars were secretly recording troop movements and military gate access codes. It is a stark reminder that modern vehicles are essentially rolling surveillance platforms.
When the Norwegian Home Guard rented a fleet of civilian cars for a major security drill, they didn’t realize they were essentially driving foreign surveillance pods onto a military base.
According to a shocking report from the Norwegian business daily Dagens Næringsliv, Norwegian troops made a highly alarming discovery: their Chinese-made rental vehicles were quietly recording everything. The cars logged video of troop movements, tracked their routes, and, worst of all, recorded the exact access codes soldiers were typing into keypads to open military gates.
A tangled corporate supply chain
How does a NATO military end up using compromised vehicles for a sensitive security drill? It comes down to a messy corporate supply chain and a severe lack of alternatives.
The Norwegian Armed Forces have a massive framework agreement with First Rent A Car Norway AS, which operates locally under the Hertz brand. On paper, it looks like a standard civilian fleet contract. However, First Rent A Car Norway is actually controlled by Volvo Cars, which is majority-owned by the Chinese automotive juggernaut Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
So when the military needed a fleet of cars on short notice, they ended up driving Chinese-made Deepal EVs. The absolute kicker? The military kept using the cars throughout the exercise anyway, simply because they didn’t have enough alternative vehicles available to swap them out.
The 200-sensor blind spot
This isn’t an isolated bout of paranoia. Norway’s National Security Authority warned in its recent “Risiko” assessment that a modern civilian car can easily contain more than 200 electronic sensors. If foreign intelligence services gain backdoor access to that telemetry, they don’t need to deploy traditional spies. The soldiers literally drive the informants onto the base themselves.
Other militaries are already treating the automotive supply chain as a critical vulnerability. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently issued a sweeping ban preventing Chinese-made vehicles from entering military bases, explicitly citing the risk that integrated cameras and sensors could be hijacked for espionage. They even went as far as forcibly recalling Chinese-made vehicles that had previously been issued to senior officers.
We are used to thinking of cybersecurity in terms of smartphones and servers. Germany’s Bundeswehr recently locked down the use of personal smartwatches around classified material. But as the Norwegian incident proves, the next major data leak might not come from a hacked phone. It might come from the rental car idling at the security gate.
