(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk used an opportunity to speak to an audience in China to strenuously deny the electric carmaker would ever use a vehicle’s technology for spying.

Appearing on Saturday at the China Development Forum, a conference organized by a unit of the country’s State Council, in a session titled: The Next Disruptive Innovation?, Musk said that if Tesla ever used its cars to spy in China, or anywhere, we would get “shut down everywhere.”

“If a commercial company did engage in spying, the negative effects to that company would be extremely bad,” Musk said. “For example, if Telsa used the cars to spy in China — or anywhere, any country — we will get shut down everywhere. So there’s a very strong incentive for us to be very confidential with any information.”

His comments came less than 24 hours after news broke that Tesla’s cars have been banned from Chinese military complexes and housing compounds because of concerns about sensitive data being collected by cameras built into the vehicles.

The ban, relayed to residents of military housing and others this week, was triggered by concerns that the world’s biggest maker of EVs is collecting sensitive data via the cars’ in-built cameras in a way the Chinese government can’t see or control, a person familiar with the matter said.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.