Whistleblower: China May Have Accessed Tesla Employees' Data

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Facts

  • A former Tesla employee, Lukasz Krupski, has claimed that Chinese Tesla staff gained access to the data of more than 100K employees at the company. Writing to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), he said the data accessed 'could be very useful for Russian or Chinese intelligence.'1
  • Krupski, who first joined the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing company in 2018, told the Office that the data came from Tesla's project tracking software called Jira. It included passport numbers, medical details, and salaries of current and former Tesla employees across the world, among other things.2
  • While Tesla employed more than 127K people last year, the database included a significant number of former employees, including thousands of files on why they left the company. Tesla has said that anyone with a 'valid Tesla email address' could access the system, prompting German journalists earlier this year to suggest that Chinese Tesla employees also had access.1
  • Krupski, a self-described EV enthusiast and 'Tesla believer,' has previously disclosed customer complaints surrounding Tesla's driver-assist systems, dubbed by the media as the 'Tesla files,' and has been interviewed by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Securities and Exchange Commission.2
  • While national security laws in China allow the government to demand data from businesses operating in the country, authorities in the Netherlands, Tesla's European headquarters, are probing the company's broader data practices. Former and current employees have also filed three lawsuits against Tesla in the US over data breaches, with the company over the summer telling staff that it's committed to protecting data.1
  • This comes as Tesla sales in China fell by about 17.8% year-over-year in November, though they did rise by roughly 14.3% month-over-month in October. Its sales also grew at a much slower pace — 1% year-over-year in October — compared to China's EV passenger vehicle market growing 30.1%.3

Sources: 1The telegraph, 2Teslarati and 3Seeking alpha.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Guardian. Tesla has exposed both employee and customer data on a global scale, which is why governments across the West are scrambling to probe the source of these breaches and develop security measures to prevent future scandals of this kind. While Tesla claims a 'disgruntled former employee' is behind the bad press, other employees have come forward with similar findings. More than 100K files of personal information are vulnerable to international bad actors due to Tesla's failed security systems, which could jeopardize US security and give the PRC an advantage.
  • Narrative B, as provided by The diplomat. While steps toward better data protection should certainly be taken, it's important to understand the positive diplomatic outcomes of Tesla's business dealings in China. In the words of Elon Musk, the US and China are co-dependent superpowers who, without economic ties, could very well end up on opposing sides of the battlefield. In a similar fashion to sporting events, individual Western-based companies offering olive branches to China could help cool tensions as the economic world order begins to shift. The big picture shows Tesla being a boon to warming US-PRC relations in general.

Predictions