This week I tried to rent a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra for the day and the terms stopped me cold. It was 600 AED ($160) for the day, which is fair enough, but the deposit was 3,000 AED (almost $1,000 USD) and the dealer would only return the deposit after 21 days. There's no Xiaomi dealership in Dubai yet, so the car has come in through a third party, and those are the terms you get when someone knows you have nowhere else to go.

I'm not telling you this to complain about a rental car company. I'm telling you because of what I was actually thinking while I sat there working out whether it was worth it — which was that this annoying, faintly exploitative arrangement is still more than an American car enthusiast is allowed to have. They can't reach this car at a worse price, with a larger deposit, or for a single afternoon. The option doesn't exist for them at all.

I left the U.S. for a job, not for principle

I've moved out of the United States three times now — China, then Singapore, then Dubai — and every one of those moves happened because there was a well-paying legal job on the other side. It wasn't conviction. It was mostly privilege, and I'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise: I got to keep choosing which set of rules I lived under, and most people are handed one at birth and that's the entire menu. Moving didn't make me wiser than anyone who stayed. It just gave me more than one place to stand while looking at the same question.

That's what I keep coming back to when I read the comments on my videos. One comment pointed out that the CEO of Ford owns a Xiaomi SU7 (a Chinese EV) and drives it daily. The comment continued to question why the people writing the rules get the car when you don't. Another said he'd accept the ban, but that if the deal is you can't buy the better car, the deal ought to include somebody building you a comparable one — otherwise you're left with worse cars and a nicer word for it. Other comments went on to say there are no warranties for Chinese cars and they come with manufacturing risks.

None of that is ignorance. It's just people reasoning about something they've been prevented from encountering, which is a different problem entirely — because the same rule that settles the question also removes the evidence you'd need to check it.

So why are these cars so controversial?

So I did what I always do, which is read the document. The Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026 opens with findings, the section where Congress states in its own words why the law exists.

It doesn't begin with data, or surveillance, or espionage. It begins with the American automotive industry — jobs, supply chains, advanced manufacturing — and it names the interests at stake as economic security, industrial competitiveness and technological leadership. It continues to talk about export volume, noting that China exports roughly 8 million vehicles a year, about twice what any other country exports, and is increasingly targeting export markets.

Those are findings about market share and competitive position, written into the first page of the statute.

Protecting your car industry is legitimate

And that's fine. Every major economy protects the industries it considers strategic, and the United States is entitled to protect its own. I've spent 20 years advising companies on rules like this one, and I would never tell a client to be outraged that a country is defending its carmakers. I'd tell them to plan for it.

So my actual point is smaller and more boring than the headline version: nobody hid anything. The economic purpose is right there in public, in the first finding, and it still reaches people as a security story — because of the title of the act ("Connected Vehicle Security Act", and because that just makes a better headline.

U.S. - China policy is not two-sided

Before I moved to the UAE, I used to think this the U.S.-China trade relations were two-sided, but living in the Gulf cured me of that. Here you watch a single country hold one interest in semiconductors, a different one in energy and a third in ports — none of them lining up, all of them sincere. Good versus bad simply doesn't work logically. Once you've seen it, you can't go back to the two-sided version.

Travel is the most complete way out of a single information environment, and I know most people can't do it, so let me put it more usefully. Exposure just means encountering something outside of somebody else's description of it, and that can be as simple as reading the primary document instead of the coverage. It cuts both ways, too. A professional in China who reads this newsletter is enclosed by her own rules just as surely, and those rules decide what she gets to encounter.

In some ways, I'm in a position to go and look, so I go and look, and I bring it back. That's what this letter is for.

It's ok to have beliefs on complicated topics. We all do. But we should hold them based on first-hand experience, rather than things we watched or read on a screen.

Stay curious,

Jamilia Grier
​Writing about the rules shaping technology and business across the US, China, and the Gulf — and what they mean for anyone building across borders.

​Share this newsletter with a friend.

Follow me on YouTube, LinkedIn​