A standard smart meter can’t exactly. It only measures the energy that is getting consumed into the house or whatever is behind it. But some companies have started to develop energy profiles on appliances though. Say for instance that your washing machine pulls a specific amount of power for 5 minutes, then a different amount for 15 minutes, etc as it runs through the various parts of the cycle. It creates sort of an energy signature that they might be able to tell what it is even if they are only looking at the combined usage of everything in the house. In my experience, this kind if profiling isn’t very accurate, but it might get better over time with AI models.

I’m not here to defend the Chinese government or anything, but there is an argument to be made that the US has an equivalency to each one of these things.

CCP officials at tech companies - NSA backdoors

Uyghur slaves - Prison labor aka war on drugs

Taiwan - Gaza/Literally any “3rd world” nation with oil

Censorship - Right wing media empires/red state bills targeted to downplay US atrocities taught in schools

Retaliation against protestors - Police brutality Social media censorship - Oligarchs owned social media

I think a lot of people are less falling for Chinese propaganda and more overcoming US propaganda.

I got a smart lock after realizing that we would simply forget to lock the front door sometimes since we typically leave via the garage. It’s connected to Home Assistant and now will lock automatically if no one is home.

Technically, I know that a smart lock is less secure, but in most real world scenarios, knowing that the lock will be locked when we are not home, on top of being notified if it becomes unlocked, I’d argue that it’s more secure now than when I had a dumb lock.