Securing Decisions: Sovereignty and Semiconductors

This chapter explores how different critical components of autonomous vehicles are ‘secured’ through a range of techniques. In the first instance, the chapter considers how the decision-making capacities of autonomous vehicles are dependent on them operating as ‘unfamiliar’ forms of sovereign actors. In such cases, the autonomous vehicle offers a kind of ‘functional sovereignty’, derived through the software that underpin them, to which other parties are subject. Firms in such cases—like other big tech companies—have been able to carefully manage access to underlying decision-making data—even if compelled to release it for regulatory reasons. The second part of the chapter focuses on efforts to secure a piece of computational hardware critical for the development of autonomous vehicles: the semiconductor chip. The ongoing ‘chipification’ of automobility has led to an increased demand for semiconductors, culminating in a Covid-19 pandemic induced ‘chip crisis’. Through an analysis of the global semiconductor chip market, the chapter considers how the European Union (EU) has relaxed rules around state aid to boost future capacity in chip fabrication in the EU bloc—to the likely benefit of (German) carmakers, aided by the exceptional status of former East German states.