John Deere remotely disables Ukrainian tractors plundered by Russians (opens in new tab)

No amount of spin on how this kind of technology CAN be used in a positive way will ever get me to support it. It also CAN be used against innocent people.

Right-to-repair is a hill I will die on, and John Deere is 100% wrong and should not even have the ability to remotely disable any of their products. FULL STOP.

See? It just takes a war to justify such features.

And I doubt there is a stronger argument anywhere for why no manufacturer should ever be allowed the ability to remotely disable their products.

THIS IS WRONG, and an especially evil use of this capability, because it extends conditional permission to use a purchased product only until the user does something deemed "unacceptable" or "politically incorrect". (And really, there is no good side in the Ukraine conflict, which is all the more reason we should stay far away.)

I'm an IoT guy, but this is a great example of why people should avoid IoT in things they buy. (I refuse to buy "connected" cars (which means no new cars, these days!) for this very reason. And I'd apply this policy to phones, if I could...)

Political Correctness kills. We have thousands of years of bloody human history to prove it. We should not extend that into the realm of twisting technology to curse things that belong to Big Brother's CurrentEnemyOfTheDay. (Whether Big Brother is Big Govt, Big Corp, or both...)