US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday said his agency has national security concerns over Chinese autonomous vehicle companies operating in the American market.

He expressed his opinion after some lawmakers called for restrictions on their operations.

“Whether we are talking about hardware or software, in the same way, there are concerns around telecoms or TikTok, there are concerns around transportation technologies,” Buttigieg was quoted as saying by The South China Morning Post.

Buttigieg said the United States needs to better understand “the true ownership of the different enterprises that are supplying different elements of our transportation systems.”

In a July 17 letter to Buttigieg and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a bipartisan group of four lawmakers asked for an investigation into the prevalence of Chinese AV technology in the US and how it can be restricted.
“Technology used by AVs, LiDAR, RADAR, cameras, AI and other advanced sensors and semiconductors can all be used to collect data on the American people and infrastructure that could be shared back to China and ultimately to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” the lawmakers wrote as quoted by the newspaper.