From 14 to 18 September the Oslo and Akershus Home Guard (HV-02) ran Operasjon Hovedstad, the Guard’s largest exercise this year. They drilled command, movement and the protection of sites, including Oslo airport in a wartime scenario. The duty cars were not the army’s. They were rented from Hertz.

At some point soldiers opened the dashboard screen and found films. Lieutenant Fredrik Blanck told Dagens Næringsliv what they showed: who got in, who got out, where they drove, whom they picked up, how long they stayed. The recordings also caught the codes tapped at gates, sometimes with a keycard. That is not a remote guess. It is what they saw on the cars they were driving.

DN wrote that at least two of the vehicles were Deepals, a brand of the Chinese state-controlled maker Changan. Hertz Norge, which supplied them to the forces, is tied through Volvo Cars to the Chinese Geely group. The chain matters: one thing is who built the car, another is who owns the rental firm. Volvo says Chinese ownership is not a security risk and that data cannot be shared with Geely without a legal basis. From what has been published, we do not know whether any file left the car.

Once the soldiers understood what the camera was filming, they reported it. The recordings were deleted, and Hertz was asked for a full list of the cars used on the exercise. Until then, for lack of alternatives, the vehicles stayed in the field. Defence minister Tore Onshuus Sandvik told the Storting on 16 October that no specific risk assessment had been done for the Chinese rentals. There was a threat assessment, including digital footprint, as before any exercise. That was all.

Sandvik widened the frame rather than narrowing it. The risk of collection through sensors, he said, applies to all modern vehicles — and to phones, and to watches. Some Forsvaret sites are open to the public, others are not; where needed, cars with cameras can be banned. Several units already park private cars outside camp. The security authority (NSM) has warned that a new car can hold more than 200 sensors. That does not prove a pipe to Beijing. It shows why a Guard drilling with Hertz has to look at the dashboard, not just the engine.

PST, the police security service, has warned for years about Chinese intelligence. DN noted, in parallel, that the same PST sits on the state rental contract in which Hertz is a supplier. The contrast does not close the file. The question left is simple and still without a public answer: besides what was wiped from the car, did anything leave it?

Image: Leonhard Lenz, the Storting, Oslo, 17 August 2022, CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows parliament, where the minister answered; not the exercise cars.

Sources consulted: Security fears in Norway as Chinese smart cars record sensitive military data — South China Morning Post; Kinesiskeide leiebiler filmet forsvarsøvelse — NRK; Written question to the defence minister, answer 16 Oct 2026 — Stortinget.