The U.S. connected-vehicle crackdown is turning into a stress test for the auto industry’s deepest, least visible dependency: not engines, not batteries, but software provenance and connectivity components that sit inside almost every modern vehicle. The new rules are aimed at keeping cameras, microphones, location data, and vehicle telemetry from becoming an intelligence vulnerability if code or systems can be influenced by “foreign adversaries.”

In practice, they force carmakers to do something the industry has never been required to do at this scale, prove where critical software was developed and who ultimately controls it, under an aggressive compliance clock that many suppliers were not built to support.

General Motors (GM) has signed a new agreement with Texas-based Noveon Magnetics Inc. to supply rare-earth magnets for its full-size pickup trucks and SUVs, marking a critical step in its broader push to localize the supply of materials vital to the automotive and defense industries. This is GM’s third such deal with U.S.-based suppliers, as it accelerates efforts to reduce dependence on China, a country that has long dominated the global rare-earth magnet trade.

Alongside Noveon, GM has also entered into supply contracts with MP Materials Corp., headquartered in Las Vegas, and E-Vac Magnetics, a South Carolina-based unit of Germany’s Vacuumschmelze GmbH. With these deals, the automaker says it will be able to source the majority of its rare-earth magnets for key vehicle platforms from domestic suppliers.

China’s housing ministry announced an expansion of the “whitelist” program for real estate projects, aiming to boost bank lending for unfinished developments to 4 trillion yuan ($561.8 billion) by the end of 2024. This is part of a broader effort to stabilize the real estate market, which has faced a severe downturn since 2021…