They played fast and loose with government bailouts during the 2007 meltdown, they pay zero federal taxes (creative accounting) and have been selling off various divisions - their Medical Imaging division is now owned by the Chinese.
Now, their appliance division is too. From American Mind:
Smart appliances are a threat to American national security
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo recently sounded the alarm on China, warning that the Communist nation poses a significant threat to U.S. national security. She’s right. And of all the security threats presented by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the country’s unrelenting harvesting of data is perhaps the biggest. Which brings us to Haier, a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company that is heavily invested in the U.S. market.
Headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong, Haier Group Corporation entered the U.S. market in 1999. Initially focused on manufacturing and distributing two rather niche products—compact refrigerators and electric wine cellars—as profits grew, so did Haier’s vision for the future. In June 2016, Haier made headlines when it purchased GE Appliances, an American home appliance manufacturer based in Louisville, Kentucky, for $5.4 billion. That was the point when Haier went from being a Chinese company operating in the U.S. to a dangerous Chinese company operating in the U.S.
According to Aynne Kokas in her brilliant new book, Trafficking Data, Haier’s acquisition of GE Appliances, which now makes it “the world’s largest consumer appliance company,” “specifically targeted growth through the IoT.” For the uninitiated, IoT refers to the Internet of Things, a network of physical objects or “things” that communicate with each other via embedded sensors and software. IoT is fast becoming the central nervous system of our tech-fueled world. This year alone, IoT devices have generated global revenues of $19.5 billion, representing a 13 percent increase from 2021. In the race to connect every device to every other device, China is leading the way.
IoT devices pose a genuine threat to users’ safety. That’s because they create numerous bridges between insecure networks and insecure devices, allowing hackers to gain control of people’s digital devices and wreak havoc. Devices can easily be hijacked, allowing bad actors to eavesdrop on unsuspecting users.
Over the past few years Haier has created an entire line of IoT, or “smart,” appliances including smart ovens, smart microwaves, and smart refrigerators. As I have discussed elsewhere, in the world of tech, “smart” is simply a synonym for surveillance. Smart devices connect to various apps and other devices through a wireless connection, which makes them ripe for hacking. Moreover, these devices collect and create copious amounts of data which begs the question, Where is this data stored?
Much more at the site. This sort of spying is insidious - they can snoop on your WiFi network as well as keeping track of how much milk you have in your fridge. Solution? Set up Pi-Hole on your home network. Pi-Hole was originally designed to block advertisements from being served over your network - the advertising servers to not see any "ad block" software - it looks to them like the ad was served so you don't get any annoying "Remove your ad-block to see this site" messages.
Pi-Hole can also be used to filter outgoing traffic too - your refrigerator wants to "talk" to China? It will think that it did but the data went into a bit-bucket and nothing left your home network.
Simple to implement and it does your bit to starve the monkeys.
Leave a comment